Retrace
by Firebirdie
Summary: Darth Revan is the sum of her masks. Some she chooses; others are chosen for her. She plays a long game—unless she herself is being played. But Revan is nobody's puppet . . . An AU take on KOTOR.
1. Convergence

**Retrace**

**o.O.o**

**A/N:** Yes, it's yet another Revan-remembers fic. Whoops? Nah, I regret nothing. :)

A few things, in the interest of full disclosure:

1) This is not a straight retelling. I'm playing fast and loose with canon dialogue and game mechanics in addition to the backstory/history and metaphysics of the Star Wars universe.

2) I am not a fan of the Jedi Order. I'm not setting out to bash them, but I won't hesitate to call it like I see it—and I do not see them as necessarily right or good.

3) In fact, I am not a fan of the entire alignment system, in-game or out. Black-and-white morality is too clean and neat. I like me some ambiguity! Yay! So that's what you're getting.

4) Any and all ships contained herein will be very, _very_ slow-burn.

Enjoy, and may the Force be with you. :)

**Part 1: Convergence**

_In which timelines shift, the Force protests, an elevator shaft is grievously misused, and Revan sees double._

**o.O.o**

The Force shrieks a warning a raw instant before Revan gathers her power and _jumps_. The shockwave from the explosion not two meters from where she was standing slams into her back, sends her cannoning into the last survivor of the Jedi task force sent to kill her. The girl's lightsaber is knocked from her hand and goes spinning away—and then it's a mad rush of air and sound and fire as the bridge of the _Crusader_ vomits atmosphere into the void of space.

Revan gives a sharp Force push to propel herself away from the gaping hole in the hull. One of the navigators' stations rears up before her. She seizes the armrest in an iron grip.

The Jedi—Bastila Shan, she's certain, the girl whose Battle Meditation has been so irritating these past few months—manages to cling to Revan's robe, and gives no sign of letting go.

The howling chokes off as the emergency O2 shields activate, and the _Crusader_'s flagging life support system frantically pumps air back onto the bridge. Revan lets go, twists around, kicks the Jedi away as she springs to her feet. She still has one of her lightsabers. Shan has nothing.

"Surrender and I may show mercy," Revan says, more on principle than out of any real expectation.

Shan picks herself up, fists clenched at her sides, eyes blazing in stubborn defiance. "I'll never surrender to the likes of you," she spits out. Of course.

The ship groans and buckles as another salvo from the _Leviathan_ hammers at its port side. Revan seeks out the lives of her crew, pinpricks of light in the Force. They flicker out by the dozens as air vents from the tortured vessel. And in the distance, a hateful presence is laughing in satisfaction, watching the ship burn. Waiting for her to burn with it.

"That traitorous wretch," Revan hisses. "If this is how he hopes to gain command of the Sith—"

"The Dark Side will always consume itself!" Shan shouts over a deafening burst of laser fire.

"And you with it, it seems," she says. She flicks her wrist, and Shan is thrown to the side, pinned against a monitor bank with a mere thought. Revan activates the nav station, accesses the systems status reports even as she makes a rough count of survivors through the Force. There are less than fifty crew left alive on board. Fifty and dropping, out of an original complement of hundreds.

She will extract the cost of their lives out of Malak's miserable hide.

But first, she must find a way off the _Crusader_ before it crumbles around her. The escape pod banks were some of the first areas targeted after weapons and shields, but there are a few left intact. If she can reach them.

There's no choice but to try, really. She opens ship-wide communications. "Attention all stations," she says briskly. "Escape pods in the aft starboard section remain operational. Make your way there and jettison immediately." Hopefully that will get everyone who is able moving in the right direction. These are her best and brightest, the most loyal of her people. She would hate to lose any more of them to Malak's treachery.

The bridge shudders, and the shimmering O2 shields flicker. Ominous, that. Revan turns to consider Shan as their time drains away. The girl is strong in the Force, perhaps even at Malak's level—or she could be, with time. Her Battle Meditation has caused far more trouble for Revan's fleet than first expected. And she has a brittleness to her, hairline fractures that, with the right pressure, might one day shatter. Splendid.

Revan gestures, and Shan is wrenched from the monitor bank to sprawl in an ungainly heap at her feet. The girl gasps, struggling to rise, a ferocious scowl on her fine-featured face.

Revan grabs the collar of her robes and hauls her upright, then starts dragging her to the turbolifts.

"Let go of me!" Shan yells, writhing and kicking ineffectually. Ah, the advantages of proper armor. The Mandalorians got that right, at least.

"Do you want to die here, Jedi?" Revan asks in mild tones. "Because that is easy enough to arrange. If, on the other hand, you'd rather live to irritate me another day, either stop struggling or start walking."

Shan digs her heels in. And slides, because her boots lack adequate traction and the floor is solid, polished durasteel. Honestly. "What will you do with me?" she says, voice quavering ever so slightly.

"That," says Revan, "is entirely dependent upon whether or not we survive long enough to reach an escape pod."

"You either break your prisoners or kill them if they will not break."

"True. But perhaps you should be more concerned with more immediate threats to your life. _I_ am actually starting to like you. Malak's turbolasers most certainly do not."

Shan blanches, but doesn't resist when Revan tugs her to the lift shaft and blasts the doors open with a wave of Force energy. Revan peers down—it's a long way from the command deck to the aft starboard pod bay, but thankfully it's mostly vertical.

In an effort to minimize the possibility of horrible splattering death in the event of malfunction, the repulsorlift generators are not attached to the elevator box itself. Instead, they are spaced every three floors, their influence extending far enough above to keep the lift hovering at the appropriate level, while providing redundant safeguards against falling. If a generator fails and the lift accelerates past a certain velocity, all repulsors below it will automatically activate with increasing intensity, and the lift will be brought to a safe—if somewhat jarring—halt.

"Repulsorlift cushions?" says Shan, taking a deep breath. She looks a bit green. Not a fan of heights, then.

"You read my mind," Revan says, smirking behind her mask.

She takes Shan by the hand and dives into the shaft.

They plummet, the wind of their passage snapping the edges of Revan's cloak. Faster and faster, until the sensors register the danger and thirty feet below, the generator light blinks green. Revan braces herself as they smack into a billowing wall of force that slows their descent appreciably. Another cushion, and another—her teeth ache from the repeated impacts, but she isn't too worried.

Until, that is, Malak's assault takes out the Crusader's main power generators.

Life support, the O2 shields, and gravity are powered by the backup generators, but everything else shuts down. Including, incidentally, the elevators' safety measures.

Revan curses as a horrible splattering death looms in the near future.

"To the sides!" Shan cries out, Force-pushing the opposite wall of the shaft.

Together they smash into the wall, Revan's head smacking against an outthrust coolant pipe with a ring of metal on metal; the breath is crushed out of her by the force of the impact, and stars explode across her vision. But she reaches out, left hand tight around Shan's, right hand scrabbling desperately for purchase—

Her fingers snag on a nest of conduits. She surges the Force through her entire limb to strengthen it as her own weight, and Shan's, and their combined momentum, conspire to turn her shoulder into a block of white-hot agony.

She breathes through her teeth as something wet and hot bubbles at the back of her throat. At least they're not falling anymore, she thinks.

"Door," she grunts.

Below her, Shan gestures, and the door below them hisses open. Shan swings through the portal. Revan follows more slowly, clambering down the conduit line until she's close enough to make the drop. She staggers the landing, falls to her knees. Her ribs, her skull, her shoulders—she wants nothing more than to curl up here and wait for the pain to _stop_.

There's a snap-hiss of a lightsaber igniting. Hers; it's red. And Shan has it. No, two—where did she get two red lightsabers when Revan lost one of them? It makes no sense—Shan has them and is going to _use them_, and this will be among the most ignominious deaths of any Sith Lord in recorded history, death by traitorous apprentice and elevator shaft and ungrateful Jedi—

She sets her jaw and sinks into the Force, feeding the maelstrom with that pain, her fear, her fury at the one who caused all this.

Then something cool and cleansing pours down her spine, shocking her out of the half-trance—Shan's doing. Revan stares up at her through the mask and the red glow as the pain fades to a more tolerable level.

"Jedi," she croaks bitterly, shaking her head. The world swoops and weaves. She coughs, presses a hand to her chest as bones grate against each other where they should not.

"Yes," Shan snaps. "Now where are these escape pods on which we've pinned our final hopes?"

Revan refocuses, checks the level they're on. She lets out a surprised breath that catches somewhere between her lungs and her mouth. "They're on this deck," she says, wonderingly. Perhaps the Force is on her side once more. Or Shan's. Either way, it's convenient.

"Revan . . ."

She stands, buoyed by a swell of dark power, and calls her lightsabers from Shan to herself. The Jedi does not resist the pull, although she probably could have. And only one saber hilt thunks into her hand. Strange. Revan's eyes ache with the effort; she can practically feel the blood vessels bursting in her sclerae. But she has no time for weakness, no time at all—she sets off down the corridor without bothering to see if Shan follows. The Jedi _will_ follow. She has nowhere else to go. So Revan strides along, lighting the way in lurid crimson and black, and Shan trots after her.

Most of the escape pods are destroyed or jettisoned already. They arrive in the bay just as a squad of security officers pile into one of them, filling every available inch of space. Their mousy-haired lieutenant freezes at the sight of her. "Lord Revan?" he calls out.

"Go," she says. "Get out of here."

"Yes, ma'am!"

And with a clank and a hiss and a faint rumble of the pod's engines blasting off, she and Shan are alone again.

"Come on," Revan snaps, stumbling towards the nearest pod and keying in the activation code.

"Do you honestly expect to survive out in the middle of a massive space battle?" Shan says.

Revan laughs, low and wet. "We have a better chance out there than in here. Now get in."

Revan initializes the launch sequence as Shan clambers into the escape pod. She is on the verge of total exhaustion—her battle with the Jedi was long and drawn-out and profoundly tiring, even when it came down to only herself and Shan; her injuries are no longer content to lie quiet with or without the Force; and she is furious at Malak, yes, but mostly _weary_, because this, this has been a long time in coming and she should have expected it . . .

_Dar'vod._

Damn him.

The pod door seals, and the entire contrivance lurches before it goes spinning off into space. Revan peers out the window at her crippled flagship. The _Crusader_ dwindles into the distance, blooms of fire and debris marring its hull, and when it crumbles into pieces Revan spares a moment to lament the beautiful vessel.

There are no lives left on board by then. She is grateful. Explosive decompression is not a pleasant way to go.

She leans back in her seat, closing her eyes as her head swims again and her ship's corpse doubles and redoubles. She does not want to see more dead _Crusader_s than there really are. Is. Are. Something.

"You're still injured."

She cracks an eye open. "Your grasp of the obvious is truly inspiring," she says. She coughs again, tastes copper.

Shan is watching her, wary but unafraid. "What happens now?"

"Now we—"

The escape pod lurches, wrenches to port as _something_ hits it—debris or laserfire or a whole ship, she doesn't know, she never does find out. Revan and Shan are both thrown about the madly spinning cabin.

It occurs to her, too late, that perhaps utilizing the safety harnesses might have been a good idea.

**o.O.o**

Bastila moans as awareness returns, and with it, nausea. She is drifting in zero-g, turning gently, or perhaps the escape pod is turning around her. She has no reference points from this angle. Her head hurts.

What happened? There was . . .

Bastila gasps, remembering. Darth Revan had her, and they made it off the _Crusader_ but now—she searches the dim pod interior and finds the Sith Lord floating near what should be the floor, currently functioning as a sort of rotating wall. She reaches out with the Force. Revan's exhaustion is palpable, as is her pain.

"You're awake," Revan says, words clipped and tight, as if spoken through her teeth.

Bastila grasps the back of one of the jump seats to steady herself. She stops turning. The nausea abates slightly. "So what happens now?" she asks.

"Depends on who finds us first," Revan says. She reaches up, brushes back her hood, and pulls off her helmet. Bastila stares, shocked—every report she's ever heard has claimed that Revan never, _ever_ removes her mask. Beneath, her face is all hard planes and sharp angles, corpse-pale, black hair chopped brutally short. Her eyes are dull yellow, intent on the workings of the helmet—she yanks something out of its interior and holds it between thumb and forefinger, nostrils flaring in distaste. She crushes it, flicks it aside. "No reason to make it easy for them."

"Transponder?" Bastila hazards.

"Which they think I don't know about. And comms," Revan adds sourly. "Just in case."

Bastila chooses not to mention that her own commlink is still operational. "In case—ah. Because the Sith will kill you," she realizes. She almost laughs at the irony, and can't resist pushing her luck: "Your own apprentice wants you dead. That makes the Republic your only chance at survival—what does that tell you about our respective causes, then, hmm?"

"You . . . wanted to capture me alive," Revan says, incredulous. "The Jedi actually went to all that trouble not to assassinate me, but to _capture_ me? Really?" She sighs. "And here I was looking forward to a heroic last stand. My mistake."

"Heroic?" Bastila snaps. "You would call slaughtering Jedi _heroic?_"

"Do I look interested in justifying myself to you, Padawan?"

"Not particularly," Bastila says, "which is a first, as you've spent most of our acquaintance hiding behind that rather tasteless helmet."

"Critiquing my sartorial taste, now?"

"Oh, it's fine, if your intent is to shock and awe people with absurd melodrama."

"Maybe it is." Revan pauses, then says, "This is not the discussion I expected."

Bastila rubs her eyes. "It has been a very long day."

". . . So it has."

They fall into an uncomfortable silence, punctuated by sporadic flashes of light through the viewports as the Republic and Sith fleets do their level best to destroy each other. The Force is strange, here on this battlefield—something has shifted, some vital gear has slipped. It is not painful, exactly, but it is _off,_ and it makes Bastila nervous.

"Problem?" Revan asks.

Bastila pushes herself towards the viewport, peers out into the chaos of the battle. "I don't kn—"

The wrongness in the Force surges, a riptide dragging her under. Bastila cries out at the assault on her senses—she retreats into herself in an attempt to weather it, wait it out, but there is nothing to hold onto, nothing to hide behind. The storm threatens to drown her—

Ice. Walls of black ice. In the sudden calm, Bastila can sense Revan's shock and fear and grim determination as the waves heave and roil, threatening to crush them both, barely held at bay by her mental shield. _What is this?_ the Sith demands, a tiny voice in the maelstrom.

_I don't know,_ Bastila thinks. _It's wrong, it shouldn't be—something is _wrong_—_

The walls buckle, Revan's shields cracking. Bastila can hardly breathe. She steels herself, then pushes back, adding her own strength to the walls. She senses surprise, and something approaching gratitude, but cannot pay them any mind as she and Revan try to hold steady amid the convulsions tearing through the Force.

_Damn_, she hears distinctly, and a heartbeat later she knows why. She can _feel_ the oncoming wave, the worst yet, a tsunami building on itself, towering over them—it will smash them, sweep them away like so much debris—

The Force—the Dark Side burns around Revan, burns like frost. Bastila recoils instinctively until the intent becomes apparent: Revan is throwing every scrap of her power into their shields. Very well. Bastila pours her own into the effort, sealing the cracks in the wall, hoping it will be enough, fearing it will not.

And then—

The wave crashes down. The Force screeches its pain. The wall is gone, obliterated—shards of ice and thought and memory rip through her and through Revan. They cling to each other, Jedi Padawan and Sith Lord, reduced to flotsam in the face of the immensity of the heaving, ravening Force.

It lasts forever. It lasts an instant.

And then it's over, and Bastila breathes again. The Force quiets like a sleeper after a nightmare, still fitful but no longer thrashing. In the searing mental silence that follows, Bastila reaches out, tentative. Revan's spirit burns small and cold and wavering. Wounded, badly, and now subjected to . . . to whatever just happened—she won't last long without help.

Bastila hesitates. She was ordered to capture Revan alive. But having seen the woman in action, having watched her scythe her way through some of the Order's best duelists . . . she wonders. She could do nothing. There's barely anything left to save. Then Bastila scowls, disgusted with herself. She is a Jedi, not some fallen Sith—she is a servant of the Light and of life itself, the Living Force, and that duty comes before all others.

She nudges herself off the wall and takes hold of Revan, maneuvers the Sith towards the jump seats to lay her across them. Reorienting is a dizzying process, but Bastila focuses on the task at hand, and her discomfort fades to a background murmur. She rechecks the tides of the Force—still unstable, but settling down. Good. She sinks into the currents and calls on them to heal.

She is barely conscious of time passing—it could be minutes, or it could be long hours, or it could be no time at all, so deeply is she immersed in the Force. After everything, she has too little strength left to see to any but the worst of Revan's injuries—the repeated head trauma, the broken ribs, the punctured lung. She focuses on mending or at least ameliorating these first.

It is difficult work, but she resurfaces with a stable patient and a sense of . . . not triumph, but satisfaction. Pride, maybe, for all that she should be above such base emotions.

Also, her commlink is shrieking with frantic noise.

"—stila—channels—repeat, this is—do you copy?"

She scrambles to retrieve it, nearly sobbing with relief. Voices on the comms—Jedi, her people, safety. "I'm here!" she calls out. "I—this is Padawan Shan—can anyone hear me?"

For a long moment, the static hisses and spits, unintelligible, meaningless. A familiar voice rings out. "Bastila! This is Master Lestin. Thank goodness you're all right. Where are you? What happened?"

Bastila presses the device to her forehead, shutting her eyes. "I am in an escape pod—I can find and transmit the transponder codes. And—Master Lestin, I have Revan."

**o.O.o**

_tbc_


	2. Character Creation

**A/N:** I'm back. Longer chapter this time, kinda talky, but necessary.

**A/N 2:** Edited 14 April 2013 for formatting and clarity issues.

**A/N 3, Revenge of the Edit:** 1 May 2013. Hopefully fixed what I broke while trying to fix what FFN broke. So it goes.

**Part 2: Character Creation**

_In which Bastila fails at interrogation and receives some bad news. The Council deliberates! Meanwhile, Revan's brain is a mess._

**o.O.o**

The Republic medical frigate _Mythical_ buzzes with activity. Med-droids trundle along their rounds while nurses and doctors and trauma surgeons bury themselves to the elbows in one body after another. Zhar Lestin allows the chaos to wash over him as he meditates, awaiting Bastila's return.

The Council had scarcely dared to hope—but she did it. Against all odds, she did it. The sense of triumph, of relief that pervades the present Jedi is remarkable and heartening. Even Vrook sounded happy on comms. Zhar means no disrespect to his old friend, but sometimes, the human can be rather . . . humorless.

Regardless. Bastila is alive, and Revan is badly wounded—no longer a threat.

Admiral Holiss Duncan has personally ordered a squadron to retrieve Bastila's escape pod, pulling them away from the mop-up of the battle with the Sith fleet. Even without Bastila's Battle Meditation, the Republic forces acquitted themselves well today. This is a victory in every sense—strategic, moral, spiritual. Admiral Duncan can afford to give the Padawan what amounts to an honor guard.

However, when Bastila arrives on board the _Mythical,_ honor is clearly the last thing on her mind. Once Revan is sent off to the medics—under heavy sedation already, in addition to her injuries—Bastila is summoned to the bridge. She is weary and heartsick, every step a battle of its own, every word exchanged with a smiling Duncan heavy with loss. Zhar is proud of her for remaining on her feet at all.

Bastila answers the admiral's questions mechanically, eyes far away, her words drawn out of her in fits and starts. When she speaks of the fallen Knights and Masters, her voice breaks; when she speaks of her flight from the _Crusader_, of Revan's strange determination to keep her alive, her consternation and exhaustion weigh heavy upon her shoulders.

"Admiral," says Zhar, "perhaps further debriefing could be postponed until Bastila has rested? She has been through much these past few hours, and as you can see, the Sith fleet is in full retreat."

"Of course, Master Jedi," says Duncan, with a little bow. "My apologies. Nevertheless, we thank you, Padawan Shan, for the great service you have done us this day."

"You're quite welcome," Bastila rasps.

Zhar guides her out of the hustle and bustle of the bridge, finds an unused conference room, and sits her down in one of the cushy chairs generally reserved for the admiralty. "I sense much turmoil in you, young one," he says gently. "Do you wish to speak of it?"

Bastila bites her lip, gazing fixedly at the tabletop. "Something happened to the Force," she says. "Something terrible."

"The Dark Side is strongest in the midst of slaughter—"

"No, that's not—it was not while we were fighting. It was later, in the escape pod. It felt as though it were connected to . . . to me. Or to Revan."

"I would think the distinction would be clear," Zhar says, puzzled. He examines Bastila in the Force—frayed and worn, yes, but still bright, still strong. "Perhaps it is simply a reaction to the immensity of what transpired on that ship. We—_you_—have captured the Dark Lord. You may well have altered the course of history today."

"Perhaps, Master," Bastila says. "But I cannot help but feel . . . uneasy."

"I'm sure this will prove a turning point in the war. A turn for the better," Zhar reassures her. "You did well, Bastila. Get some rest. It will clear your mind."

"Yes, Master," she says, brow still furrowed with anxiety, but she leaves in search of a berth regardless.

Zhar sits down at the long curved conference table, letting himself relax for the first time since the mission was suggested. The Force is still knotted and tangled, uncertain, corrupted—but now, at least, there is the potential to unravel it, reweave it, make it whole once more.

An hour later such optimism seems premature, as the Council members on Dantooine and Coruscant convene via holoprojector to determine what, exactly, they are supposed to do with an unconscious Sith Lord. Thanks to Bastila's intervention Revan probably will not die just yet, but the fact remains that if and when she awakens, it will not be as an ally of the Republic.

"We knew this mission was unlikely to succeed," Vandar Tokare says, brow furrowed in deep thought. "And we knew that, even if it did, the aftermath would not be an easy road."

"Are we certain that we can afford the risk of leaving Revan alive?" says Atris, white robes luminous blue from the hologram's light.

The other Councilors mutter amongst themselves. Vandar clears his throat. "We are Jedi," he says sternly. "All life is sacred. The day we begin to compromise our Code for expediency's sake is the day that the Order is truly lost. Is that not the reason why Revan fell?"

"Then what do you propose we do? I opposed this mission when it was first suggested, and this is exactly why—we may have captured her, but we lost four experienced Knights in the effort, and even now she is no friend of ours."

"We have not yet spoken with her," says Zhar, feeling the weight of the Council's eyes upon him. "She might be willing to seek redemption, if it were offered. Her cooperation in atonement for her war crimes."

Vrook Lamar scowls, his image flickering blue. "And if she is not?"

"Then we will try something else."

"What, pray tell?" Atris says. She crosses her arms, fixing each Councilor in turn in a steely look. "Indefinite imprisonment?"

"The Republic will want her knowledge—that is, after all, how we convinced them to agree to support us in this plan," says Vandar. "If we cannot convince her to divulge the source of the enemy's power, they will try. And they will fail. She is a powerful Sith. It will take far more than truth serum to draw out her secrets."

"Then what has been the point of this entire venture?" Vrook demands. "Have we sacrificed four of our best Knights for nothing?"

"Revan is no longer a threat to the Republic," Vandar says. "Without her commanding the Sith fleet—"

"—they still have Darth Malak, who for all his reliance on brute force over cunning is _still_ a dangerous opponent!"

"Calm yourself, Master Lamar," Nomi Sunrider says gently. "Now is not the time for infighting."

"No," Vandar says, "my friend makes a good point. We have discussed and debated this issue time and again. Ultimately, it comes down to this: we must discover the Sith's power source, whether Revan commands them or not. Terrible damage can be inflicted upon the galaxy, even by a mediocre general, if enough ships and troops are unleashed. And Malak is by no stretch of the imagination mediocre."

"Then Revan must be revived and interrogated," says Vrook.

"Padawan Shan is an exceptional healer," Zhar says. "And from what she has told me, she and Revan established something of a rapport during their escape from the _Crusader_."

"Are you suggesting we leave the fate of the Republic—for that is what is at stake here, Zhar—in the hands of an inexperienced apprentice?" Vrook says incredulously.

Zhar sighs. "She is a singularly _gifted_ apprentice, and of course others should and will be present to assist her."

"I will gladly lend my aid should the need arise," Vandar says. As the only other Council member physically present with the fleet, and as one of Bastila's oldest mentors, it seems appropriate.

"So we wait and see," Nomi says. "And if Revan should prove unwilling . . .?"

". . . She—her mind is _vulnerable_, at the moment," Zhar says haltingly, a terrible idea occurring to him. "There are ways to . . . press the advantage, so to speak."

"Tear her mind apart looking for intel?" Atris snorts. "What if something goes wrong? All hope of finding the Sith's weapon would be lost!"

"There may be another option," says Zhar. "It is difficult, and requires the efforts of several Masters, but it can be done . . ."

Zhar outlines the plan and listens as it is argued over, refined, and finally postponed until more is known of Revan's attitudes. He wonders if this is how corruption begins—one tiny step over the line, and another, and another.

He wonders if they can afford to refuse the chance.

**o.O.o**

She closes her eyes, allows her trepidation to dissolve into the Force. Or tries to, anyway. It settles cold and unpleasant at the back of her mind, a sludgy precipitate. She does not want to do this. She _can't_ do this—

"You'll be fine," Zhar says, patting her shoulder, ever the supportive mentor.

"We have the utmost faith in you," says Vandar, from near her knees.

Sometimes she wishes her mentors would stop telling her how brilliant and exceptional she is, and say, "Sorry, Padawan, but you're in far over your head. Let us take care of things for you." Selfish, perhaps, but in this case, she'd rather be anywhere but here in the highest-security detention block of the RAS _Tempest_, Fleet Admiral Forn Dodonna's flagship and the crown jewel of the Republic navy.

Currently playing host to the former leader of the Sith.

Bastila tries once more to center herself. It's a feeble and inadequate effort, but she has no choice but to open the cell and walk inside.

Revan lies supine on a cot, attended by a medical droid, her nose and mouth obscured by an oxygen mask, her wrists and ankles restrained. She is . . . Bastila cannot help but stare, because she is _frail_, spindly and wasted, flesh stretched dry and tight over her bones. Her face is ashen, all the color leached from her skin. Her closed eyes are sunken, shadowed as if by deep, long weariness. Every breath is thin and reedy, rasping in her throat.

Without the Mandalorian helm, she is not some looming legend, all power and menace and mystique—just a human shell, the vitality burned out by long exposure to the Dark Side.

"Is she aware?" Bastila hears Master Vandar say.

"Unlikely," says the medical droid. "Although she does seem to be developing a resistance to the sedatives we have been using."

"Wake her," says Vandar, as Zhar moves to affix the neural disruptor collar and removes the oxygen mask. Bastila swallows hard as it clicks into place around Revan's painfully thin throat.

"Of course, Master Jedi."

A brief injection and thirty long seconds of waiting later, Revan blinks awake, bloodshot eyes glazed and unfocused from the neural disruptor.

"Darth Revan," Bastila says, priding herself that her voice does not tremble. "You are on board the RAS _Tempest_ as a prisoner of war. Are you familiar with your rights as such, under Republic law?" A formality: Revan did fight on their side against the Mandalorians, but protocol and law cannot be sacrificed for convenience's sake—that is what separates them from the Sith.

Revan makes a noise, chokes. Deep dry coughs rattle in her chest. "Yes," she rasps eventually.

"I would like to ask you a few questions," says Bastila.

Revan laughs, all bitterness and spite. "You can ask."

"But you will not answer?"

She just looks through Bastila, gaze drifting lazily over her, and a creeping chill runs down the Jedi's spine. She clears her throat. "You are Revan, once a Jedi Knight of the Order, born on Deralia?"

"Yes."

"Deralia is a Rim world, is it not? In the Tammuz system. Not too far from the areas worst ravaged by the Mandalorians in the latter days of the war."

Revan smiles knowingly. "Yes."

"Is that why you were so adamant that the Jedi join the conflict?"

"The home—I haven't seen in over a decade. Of course." Still smiling, still mocking.

Bastila sets her jaw. This is not an auspicious start, yet Vandar and Zhar remain silent, simply observing. Perhaps another approach. "Revan, I am trying to understand you," she beseeches. "I only wish to know how—"

"You want to know where—where the Fleet comes from," Revan says. "How all those ships—how we build them. Helping me—is the last thing on your mind."

"What do you want from us, then?"

"I want you all dead," Revan says, a soft hiss.

Bastila folds her arms and shakes her head, sensing a complete lack of conviction. "What do you want?" she repeats.

Revan scoffs as best she can when her eyes will barely focus. "Everybody wants—something, therefore I must—as well? I don't . . . nothing you can give me."

"Not even your freedom?"

Vandar makes a faint noise of protest, quickly stifled. Revan laughs low in her throat. "As if that were ever on the table, Jedi."

Bastila is getting desperate. She is no interrogator; she is not made for this, for wrangling recalcitrant enemy commanders because they've exchanged a few words that are not entirely antagonistic, saved each other's lives through sheer necessity—_how_ can the Council expect her to make any headway whatsoever?

"Patience," murmurs Zhar.

Patience. This is not the work of a single conversation. This will be the work of days, perhaps weeks. Or longer. She must learn what makes Revan who she is, learn how to persuade the most charismatic, strong-willed leader of a generation . . .

The Republic doesn't have that kind of time.

"Very well," says Bastila, heavily. "Answer one more question for me, then. Why did you fall?"

Revan is chuckling again. It is a singularly mirthless sound. "The Jedi are weak," she says, with difficulty. "You and your—precious Republic, you are _weak_."

"That is not an answer." She's certain of it—surely it can't be that . . . that ordinary. That boring. She has spoken with a few fallen Jedi prisoners, to better gauge the enemy's mindset and thus manipulate it with her Battle Meditation, and they all say the same thing. But _Revan?_ Surely the hero of the Mandalorian Wars had a better reason to fall to the Dark Side!

Of course, Master Dorak would say that all fallen Jedi's motivations boil down to the basest of emotions. Lust for power among them. Still. It sits wrong with Bastila.

"Is it not?"

"I know that you left the Order to fight in the wars first out of noble intentions. You wanted peace."

"Peace is a lie," Revan says, toneless. "There is only passion."

"There is no emotion; there is peace," Bastila says automatically. She clamps her jaw shut, then, because _really?_ Quoting their respective Codes at a time like this? Counterproductive in the extreme. No debate—and this is not a debate, but an interrogation, Bastila must remember that—was ever won by parroting creeds at each other.

Revan should know that. She was—is—among the most persuasive speakers of their time. So why give such a non-answer?

Everything about this, Bastila thinks, is wrong. Like their exchange on the bridge of the _Crusader,_ they are both playing to a script. And it will get them absolutely nowhere. So. How to proceed? How can she bypass the armor of a Sith Lord with no interest in cooperating with Bastila, much less taking her seriously? Brute force—or Force—is always an option, if an inelegant and morally questionable one. She has heard some of the Masters insist that overpowering a prisoner's mental defenses with the Force is an entirely acceptable act in a time of war. She has heard others claim that such an act is an affront to the Jedi way.

Bastila gingerly probes the edges of Revan's mind, and nearly chokes as a familiar barrier slams down before her. On the cot, Revan's lips twitch into a smirk. "It'd take—far more than a child's power—to break me," she rasps.

"Perhaps," Vandar says gravely, "but she is not alone." Bastila can feel his consciousness stretching out to join hers, bolstering her should she try again.

Revan's head flops a bit sideways, bringing the diminutive Jedi Master into her field of view. "By all means, then," she sneers.

"No," Bastila says. "There will be no need." Because they are still following the script. Still locked in a farce of pronouncement and threat and counter-threat. Revan is powerful, even now. The threat of pain, physical or mental, will not sway her. But perhaps a different approach . . . Bastila takes a step closer, releasing the Force and focusing solely on Revan. "There will be no need for such measures, because I know you, I think, better than you'd like. I felt something within you when I saved your life. Hidden, buried deep, but undeniable. Something . . . beautiful."

Revan, to her credit, is not terribly thrown by the change in tactic. She leers a bit. It would be almost funny if it weren't both pitiful and repulsive.

"A spark of _goodness,_" Bastila says loudly, ignoring her. "Still burning, or you would not have saved my life. You are not beyond hope of redemption, Revan. You never were."

"Why would I want—"

"Because you were once a hero," says Bastila. "Once, you fought to protect the people of the galaxy. You stood on the ravaged shores of Cathar and vowed never to rest until the galaxy was made safe again."

Revan's eyes narrow. "A work in—progress, I'll grant you."

"This is what you'd call saving the galaxy?" Bastila demands. "Is it worth the billions upon billions of innocents killed in the name of some utopian Empire?"

_Anger_ snaps through her, out of nowhere, molten metal against unprotected flesh. Bastila staggers back—this is not sensing another's emotions, this is not mere empathy—it is _real,_ immediate and dangerous and _not hers_.

Master Zhar catches her before she can topple over backwards. "Bastila? Bastila, what is wrong?"

"I—I don't know," she says, pressing a hand to her forehead. The rage has passed, but something else remains, a simmering ugly morass—disdain, hate, and utter certainty.

_Not mine!_

"Master Vandar, perhaps we should continue this at another time," Zhar says.

"Very well," Vandar says with a short nod, turning to the medical droid. "Sedate her again, please."

The droid presses the oxygen mask to Revan's lower face as it makes another injection, and within seconds she is out cold.

Bastila totters out of the cell block, leaning heavily on Master Zhar for support as the alien emotions fade away.

"What happened?" Zhar asks, guiding her to the elevator.

She tries not to think about the _Crusader_, and falling, and the dull crack of Revan's ribs breaking on impact with the side of the shaft . . .

"I felt something," she says. "Anger. Terrible anger. I—I think it was hers. I couldn't block it out, I couldn't stop it—"

"Oh, dear."

Her heart rate skyrockets. "What?"

"Bastila . . . How intensely did you delve into her mind to heal her in the escape pod?"

". . . I'm not sure I follow," she says faintly as the elevator doors hiss open.

Zhar pulls her in after him and punches the button for the hangar bay. "The only reason she lives is your intervention. You said that there was a massive disturbance in the Force—but none of the other Jedi present in the battle felt it. I think you may have forged a Force bond with Revan."

Bastila stares at him. "I what?"

**o.O.o**

An hour later, she stands before the full Council.

"I—I'm not quite sure what this entails," Bastila says shakily. "I know a Force bond means that two Jedi are linked, somehow . . ."

"It means that your destinies are intertwined," says Dorak, "although to what purpose, we do not know. Whether for good or ill, you are connected."

She wants to shout _But I don't want this, I never wanted this!_, to rant and sob and snarl at how unfair it is that her fate is now shackled to that of a Sith Lord. She does none of these things. Bastila, because she is a Jedi still, _lets go_. She chokes back her frustration and fear, releases them into the Force, allows it to fill her with calm and serenity and peace. It is difficult—so very difficult. She cannot extinguish the last few embers. But she retains control and does not humiliate herself with a childish temper tantrum. Life is not fair. She serves the Force's will regardless. That is the Jedi way.

"Masters," she says, "what am I to do now?"

"Nothing," says Vandar. "We will determine the next step, Padawan. For now, leave us. It has been a very trying few days for you, and for us all."

"Yes, Master," she says, bowing, resolutely ignoring the panic building up again at the back of her mind.

In her quarters that evening, she scrutinizes her face in the mirror, searching for some outward sign of the change within her. There is none. Nevertheless, she cannot help but feel . . . tainted, somehow, by touching Revan's mind, binding them together, however inadvertently. As if even sedated and badly wounded, Revan might reach out and pull her under, drown her in the same darkness that consumed the once-valiant Knight.

Pure fancy, she knows, and she shakes her head and turns from the mirror.

Revan's mask, salvaged from the escape pod, watches her from atop the locker at the foot of her bed. It was originally a symbol of defiance, casting Revan as some kind of avenging angel for those slain by the Mandalorians. Now it is synonymous with one of the greatest evils the galaxy has ever faced.

The black eyeslit seems to pull the light from the room. Bastila shivers, and stuffs it into the footlocker under a set of her spare robes. She resolves to ignore it.

She cannot shake the sense of unease, though. She is prideful and headstrong—this she knows for certain, having been on the receiving end of more than one lecture from her Masters to that effect—and these are dangers in and of themselves. More so now that she cannot trust her own mind.

She sleeps fitfully that night, her dreams plagued by half-formed visions—war, ruin, a hooded faceless shadow. And always, a cold little voice whispers in her ear of terrible, glorious power.

**o.O.o**

In the morning they tell her that they had planned to scour Revan's mind for intelligence after her efforts failed—they seem to have expected failure, which stings a bit—but with the bond, Bastila's mind might be damaged as well. They tell her that the bond places her in exponentially greater danger from the Dark Side's influence.

They tell her, in sum, that her efforts to complete her mission have rendered its end purpose unachievable. They cannot have both—either they lose Bastila's Battle Meditation, or Revan's knowledge of the Sith.

"This places us in a . . . difficult position," says Vandar. "Removing the bond may well be our only option, but the shock will surely kill Revan, and with her any hope of discovering the source of the Sith's power."

"Then let her die," says Atris. "The Republic desperately needs Bastila—"

"—who may suffer greatly from the backlash," Vandar continues. "We could lose them both if Revan dies, whether by severed bond or directly at our hands."

"But we cannot in good conscience let this state of affairs continue!" Vrook bursts out. "If Bastila falls it will spell disaster for the Republic—imagine what the Sith could do if augmented by her abilities!"

"I will not fall over this," she declares, and the entire Council turns to her. She wilts slightly under their gazes, ranging from the compassion of Nomi Sunrider to the flinty consideration of Vrook to the reserved caution of Vandar. Zhar, at least, does not look at her as if she is about to go mad and start killing things if someone sneezes.

"You advocate maintaining the bond? To what end?" Atris says, frowning.

She presses her hands against the tabletop in an effort to keep from fidgeting. "I—I am not a good interrogator," she says slowly. "And Revan would likely take her secrets to the pyre even if we brought in the best of the best. But perhaps, though the bond, there could be—there could be some way to draw out the information we need."

Vandar looks wary. "A great risk," he says. "Particularly to you . . ."

"If we remove it, she will die," Bastila says simply. "And—and did you not command us to capture her, not kill her? Did you not say that all life is sacred, even that of a Sith Lord?"

The Council members exchange guarded glances. Across the circle, Zhar gives a tiny nod of approval.

"I believe this brings us to my earlier proposed solution," he says.

**o.O.o**

"A career soldier. It will reinforce her loyalty to the Repubilc."

"But if any of Revan should resurface, the dissonance between the implanted personality and the original might precipitate a breakdown."

"We can't simply paint over Revan with—with more of the same!"

"We will not, I assure you. She will have an ironclad moral code."

"Revan _has_ an ironclad moral code, however flawed. That's the problem."

". . . Yes, well. What say you, Master Zhar?"

"Make her something a bit shady. A smuggler, a thief—a liar. Let her be repentant though—she wants to help us, she feels guilt over her past crimes. Let her use her undeniable skills for a more positive end."

"I still think this is a bad idea." A sigh. "But you're right, both of you."

"What of the Force? We can't set this—this smuggler turned soldier loose upon the galaxy with the full range of her powers."

"True. Without any recollection of Jedi training, she would be certain to suspect something."

"So block it."

"Indeed."

"So she'll have been a smuggler, and she'll have no knowledge of the Force. The Republic captured her, offered her freedom in exchange for her services . . . as what?"

"Not a front-line fighter. It would be nigh impossible to keep an eye on her. And if she were to die . . ."

"A codebreaker. They are under constant supervision. And we can certainly give her some knowledge of slicing and cryptography."

"A fine suggestion. Now, let us discuss the details of her early life . . ."

**o.O.o**

_They dig. They carve into her, pick her apart, searching for the secret—she will not tell them, she will not let them, she will not. Cannot._

_She doesn't ask why not. Can't._

_Skinless hands and naked bone, scrabbling in the dust and the desert, burying the secret. They will not take it. They will not have it._

. . .

"To think we once believed ourselves at a disadvantage," Malak said, gazing out at the massive floating in the emptiness above the star of - - - - -. "But this? This is true power. We will be unstoppable."

"Overconfidence, my apprentice?"

"Merely an observation. The - - - - - is operating at nearly fifty percent capacity and shows no signs of slowing. At this rate we will have a fleet large enough to overrun the Republic within a matter of—"

"Numbers give an edge, not a guarantee. Do not place all your trust in - - - - -. Look at where it landed the - - - - -."

Malak laughed, leaning against the wall with folded arms. "Come, now, surely you can feel it, Revan—this place is alive with the Dark Side. With it at our command, how can we fail?"

She smiled grimly, behind the mask. "Pray that we do not find out."

. . .

_They want to tear her life apart. They have needles that drive in and out of her face, her flesh, her heart. They want to replace her. The seams do not meet up right. There is a heart tender and warm and noble and they are pressing it into her chest. They stitch it in. They stitch it in with their needles of thought. The edges bleed. There is a hole._

. . .

She was born on Deralia, the child of poor workers in the planet's agricultural zone. A long drought and a food shortage forced her parents to send her off-planet with her uncle, an informant for an intel broker, who raised her until she came of age and got a ship of her own. She fell in with a rough crowd, incurred one debt too many, and eventually began freelancing as a smuggler. During the Mandalorian Wars she stayed off the Republic's radar, but with the onset of the Jedi Civil War she was caught in the crossfire and wound up in Republic custody. They impressed her into service for her skills with computers and security systems.

. . .

_They try to take hers. But she guards it, holds it. Clutches it, blackened and shriveled and cold, in bleeding broken hands._

_Mine. Get out. Get out. No._

_They have taken her face and her name and her life but she still has this, her self, and she hides it, cuts open the sweeter soul and burrows deep like a worm at the center of a fruit._

_They say, "What is your name?"_

_Liar. Traitor. Manipulator. Butcher. Revan._

_She says, "Sen Tethis."_

_It's what they want to hear._

. . .

She was born on Deralia, the child of poor workers in the planet's agricultural zone. A Jedi on assignment to mediate a management dispute sensed her Force potential, and her parents gave her to the Order in the hopes that she would find a greater calling than harvesting other people's crops for a pittance. The money they received as compensation was enough to buy their own farm. Today they are prosperous and happy, and have made no connection between the girl they gave up and the Revanchist who defeated Mandalore the Ultimate, or the Dark Lord who threatened the Republic's very existence. And even if they did, they have long accepted that communication with their child is forbidden by the Jedi, and ill-advised in the case of the Sith.

She grew up on Dantooine, running amok amid the ruins and the stout trees and the sun-bright saw-edged grasslands. And then she came to Coruscant, a world of metal and glass and grimy light. A world of shadows. She devoured knowledge, glutted herself on it, delved deeper and deeper into secrets the Order wanted to keep hidden.

She did not fall. Not then.

(not yet)

. . .

_They say, "Where is it?"_

_She says, "I don't know."_

_She doesn't know what they're talking about._

. . .

(This never happened to Sen Tethis:)

She saw him around the enclave a lot these days. He was new. He always looked sad, though, and today was worse than usual, so she followed him across the courtyard and tugged at his sleeve and said, "Are you okay?"

He looked down at her, startled. "Uh—yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks?"

"I'm Revan. What's your name?"

"Alek."

"Nice to meet you. Whatcha doing?"

"I was going to class . . . I'm gonna be late."

"Oh. Then you should probably—"

"No, no, I just—nobody talks to me. So, um. Why did you?"

"You're sad, and sometimes it helps to talk. Are you homesick? You only got here a couple weeks ago."

He bit his lip and stared at the ground. "I—it's, I don't—home's . . . It's gone. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Have you talked to anyone else about it?"

"I—no. I mean, I did at first, to the Masters, but all they said was to l-let go. That it would get better someday. They told me to meditate on the Living Force. Because m-my family is p-part—crap. Crap." He sucked in a deep breath that kind of hitched and he blinked really hard like he was trying not to cry. "Why do you even care, anyway?" he said, almost angrily.

She hesitated, then reached for his hand. He jumped a little when she touched him. "I'm sorry," she said.

He closed his eyes and bowed his head. His hair was cut so short she could see the freckles on his scalp. "Don't tell me it'll be better someday," he croaked.

"Okay. I won't."

". . . Thanks."

She didn't know what to say so she said the first thing that popped into her head. "Want to climb trees?"

"What?"

"You know. Sneak out, go to the old grove, climb trees."

"Instead of learning how to be a Jedi." But he was smiling, kind of, or at least his lips were twitching, so that was something.

"Even Jedi need to climb trees every once in a while!" she said, tugging him forward.

He followed her.

(he always does)

**o.O.o**

_tbc_


	3. Fracture

**A/N:** Three things:

1. Huge thanks to the inestimable JL01 for bringing some issues to my attention. Certain important features of the last scene of Chapter 2 that showed up in the .rtf document apparently got eaten by FFN's ravenous formatting piranhas. The fish have been fended off with a stick, the formatting has been restored/altered to make it unappetizing, and all is well. I hope. Also, the flashbacks have been set to past tense for clarity.

2. Cryptography. I came into this knowing basically nothing about it. I've tried to keep things vague but realistic based on my adventures with Google, but if you are an actual cryptographer or know anything more about what cryptographers do all day, let me know what said day looks like. Additionally, I've altered one aspect of Revan's implanted background to make her assigned career make a bit more sense.

3. Thank you, everyone who's reviewed, followed the story, followed me, or even just read this foray into the depths of my obsession. You are all awesome. Be well!

**Part 3: Fracture**

_In which a great deal of effort goes to waste, cryptographers bicker, and Dramatic Irony abounds._

**o.O.o**

The moment Admiral Dodonna gives the all-clear, Bastila lets go of the Force as if it's scalded her. It drains away, from her and from every being aboard the Republic ships, leaving her feeling rather like a wrung-out sponge. A microbe-infested, _dirty_ sponge in dire need of an antibacterial cleanse.

Then she berates herself for letting her analogies get away from her. But only after checking to make sure that the connection between her mind and Revan's—or rather, Sen's, as the reprogramming seems to have been successful—is as tightly controlled as she can make it. A month since Revan's capture, and Bastila has yet to truly reconcile herself to the fact that they are linked. She's perfectly willing to use that link to the Jedi's advantage—she did, after all, serve as the conduit through which the Council could gain access to Revan's mind despite ferocious resistance—but that does not mean she likes the idea of it.

Particularly since her value to the Republic hinges on her ability to form connections with thousands of people simultaneously. If she were to become compromised, then the consequences would be horrific.

Bastila rises from her cross-legged position on the bridge of the _Tempest_, Dodonna giving her a sharp nod of acknowledgement from the conn. Another day, another battle. Another endless span of stillness while all around her people fight and die, the Force flowing from her to them, uniting whole fleets, giving them strength and speed and confidence. It's never enough. Not to save them all.

She brushes an errant lock of hair from her eyes, composing herself. "Admiral," she calls out, over the hubbub of the triumphant bridge crew, "if you have no more need of me . . .?"

"Dismissed, Padawan Shan," Dodonna says briskly. Her eyes soften. "We performed admirably today, thanks in no small part to you."

Bastila retreats as fast as is polite. She wants at least an hour or two to sleep, make up for lost time, before meeting with Zhar. Revan—Sen has recovered from the injuries received aboard the _Crusader_, and the Council plans to set her down in her new life very soon. Bastila cannot help but be reminded of the nature holos she used to watch as a child, curled up between her mother and father—scientists releasing rescued animals into the wild once they're healed.

She wanted to be a biologist. She remembers informing her parents of this fact at the tender age of six, completely serious. Her father grinned, cupped her face in his hands, kissed her forehead, and said, "You'll be brilliant, baby girl."

How different her life turned out to be.

Scowling, setting aside old memories, Bastila opens the door to her quarters, closes it behind her, and allows herself the childish pleasure of diving onto the bed. She's lost her equilibrium, spending so much time manipulating the thoughts of others while attempting to keep her own in line—she needs rest.

Rest, however, proves elusive. She spends her valuable free time tossing and turning, crawling under and kicking off and retrieving her sheets, too anxious to relax. She tries surrendering herself to the tides, but she brings her fears with her, staining the Living Force like blood in the water. Eventually she gives up in disgust, stalking into the 'fresher to splash her face and wake up properly, then marching out the door, pausing only to grab her lightsaber. It's not hers, quite—that was lost on the _Crusader_. She didn't construct this one, and it feels alien and awkward in her hand. But it's serviceable, and certainly more useful than no lightsaber at all. It will have to do until she can return to Dantooine and create something suitable.

Two decks above, Zhar is waiting for her in the starboard hangar bay. "I hear you were able to coordinate the rescue of an entire cruiser today," he says when she arrives. "Well done."

"We lost two corvettes," Bastila says, voice empty. The deaths of their crews still echo in the Force, intensified by their connection to Bastila when the ships went down. She felt their pain, their terror as the vacuum of space swallowed them, boiled the blood in their veins and stole the breath from their lungs. She could do nothing—not even ease their passing—so focused was she on those ships left intact to fight the Sith.

Zhar's gaze is compassionate, but his words are firm: "You cannot allow yourself to dwell on loss, Padawan. That way lies despair, and perhaps even anger."

"And thus the Dark Side," Bastila says dully.

Zhar sighs. "Yes. Soldiers die in battle—it is an ugly truth. But remember—there is no death; there is the Force. They are with us still. And by our actions we can ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain."

"Yes, Master."

"Are you prepared to awaken Revan?"

Her spine straightens. "Yes." She is. She must be. There is no other option.

"Then let us depart." He leads the way towards the medical vessel that will take them—and a still-unconscious Revan—to Admiral Duncan's flotilla near Coruscant. They will see to it that Revan is safely delivered, and then return to the main fleet; she'll be kept abreast of any dangerous developments by an informant stationed in close proximity to Revan. Her priority for now, though, is the immediate war effort. Bastila's Battle Meditation has won them several consecutive engagements—Dodonna wants her back from her "important Jedi business" as soon as possible.

At least she's useful.

Sometimes she thinks that's all she is.

**o.O.o**

_Crew quarters, RAS _Monument-II

_0618 hours_

Sen wakes up and thinks,_ What the hell did I have to drink last night?_

Her head feels like it's been repeatedly pounded against concrete until well-tenderized, then thrown in a thresher. For a long time, she can't move. Every time she tries another bolt of bruising pain drives through her skull. Slowly, hands shaking, she presses her fingers to her eyes. The deeper red-black is soothing, safe compared to the harsh scarlet glare of the overhead lights through her eyelids.

"C'mon, newbie, you've got work to do," a woman's voice snaps out nearby.

Sen winces and peeks through her fingers, squinting hard against the light. "Ungh," she says, as a scowling shadow appears over her.

"Yeah, yeah, cry me a frackin' river. Get up and get gone. Your shift starts in ten minutes."

Right. Her shift. She . . . she has a job, now. A real, legitimate job. For the Republic.

_She wants to help, she feels guilt over her past crimes—let her use her undeniable skills for a more positive end—_

Her headache spikes again, and she moans softly before hauling herself out of bed, scrubbing a hand through her short hair. Her bunkmate's a human woman, blonde and willowy, with really nice eyebrows. She's leaning against the door frame glaring at Sen, arms folded, and Sen blinks . . .

"Come _on_," the woman says.

"Sorry, sorry," she mutters, scrambling to find her jumpsuit and boots—they're in the footlocker at the end of her cot, where they always are, of course, because that's . . . where you put your things.

Whatever she drank, she is never, ever drinking it again. Ever.

Black boots, grey jumpsuit, red jacket. Gloves in her pocket. Run to the 'fresher, piss, brush teeth, dash out of the cabin and run like hell to the elevator while her nameless bunkmate shuts the door about half a centimeter behind her. It's her first day on the job. She can't be late. She wants this to work out. She does.

_She wants to help, she feels—_

Sen shakes her head fiercely. What the _hell._ This is getting to be a definite problem. Spitting out a Mandalorian curse—great language for swearing in—she jabs at the elevator button.

The doors hiss open. And Sen—stops. She—falling, falling and someone holding her hand and impact_painpainpain_ and what the hell, what the actual fracking _hell_—

"Everything all right?" the Ithorian inside asks.

She opens her mouth. She feels dizzy. "Uh—yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Are you going to Communications?"

"That I am. You must be the newest addition to our herd of nerds," he says.

"Your . . . what?" she says, forcing herself to step and step and then she's in the lift and. And that's. She breathes. Why is she panicking? It's just an elevator. It's not like anything memorable ever happened to her in an elevator. There's this weird pressure building behind her eyes the more she thinks about it, so she stops.

The Ithorian laughs. It's an incredibly resonant laugh, two mouths and four throats turning a simple expulsion of air into a happy chord. She focuses on the sound—it's beautiful. "That's what we're called by the rest of the crew. Don't worry, it's all in good fun."

Thank frack at least this guy's friendly. "Right. Um, so I'm Sen Tethis," she says, sticking out her hand.

He takes it and bows his head a little. "A pleasure. Iden Kalorn, Senior Analyst."

Iden takes her down to Comms and shows her to a workstation between a sharp-faced Bothan woman and a stocky human man. "All right, my ducklings," he says, "here's your new best friend, Sen Tethis. These two slackers are Veska Mey'lis and Pol Fintan. They'll show you the ropes and get you settled in. I have to go to a briefing with the other section heads, so I'll leave you to it."

"Thanks," says Sen, and Iden nods and leaves.

There's a mildly uncomfortable pause. She lowers herself into the seat and laces her fingers between her knees to keep from fidgeting.

"Well, welcome aboard," Pol says, one arm slung over the back of his chair, in which he's sitting sideways. "Do you want to do the awkward icebreaker activities first, or would you prefer getting to work?"

"I—work, definitely," she says.

"Brilliant," says Pol, grinning. "'Cos I hate icebreakers. Give me hives, they do. Veska here starts shedding."

Sen makes an agreeable noise.

"New Sith transmissions intercepted last night," says Veska, leveling a cool glare in Pol's direction. "We decipher and send them to Iden. He sends them to the war room."

"Just jump right in," says Pol, spinning his chair around and coming to a stop facing more or less forward, tapping at his workstation to bring up the first transmission.

"On it," Sen says.

And for the next few hours, she works—the codes the Sith use are tough, but between pretty significant number-crunching power from the onboard computers and plain old ingenuity, the three analysts manage to make significant progress.

Her headache doesn't fade out as the morning rambles on in lines of numbers and letters and algorithms. If anything, it gets worse the longer she stares at the screen.

By lunch at 1130 hours, Pol has asked if she wants to take a break no less than six times, and Veska three. "You look terrible," the Bothan says bluntly, while the human assures her that she does not in fact have to work herself to death on her first day.

"Iden'll understand if you need to take it a bit slower at first, he tends to prefer avoiding employee burnout—"

"I've got this," Sen insists. "I think I've figured out how they—"

"I'm starved," Pol says, "and you're accompanying us to the mess if I have to make Veska drag you."

Sen frowns. "Why not drag me yourself?"

"Such hunger—I cannot muster the energy—please, Sen, don't make me suffer another moment!" he whimpers, blinking pathetically up at her.

She stares at him. Then she cracks a smile, rakes her bangs out of her face, and stands up. "Okay, okay, fine."

"Pity," Veska says. "Was looking forward to dragging you."

Lunch in the mess is—pleasant. Weirdly so. Pol does most of the talking, for which she's grateful. Veska provides the pithy commentary. And Sen finds herself relaxing, for the first time since . . . in a long time. These are good people. They complain about their coworkers, their superiors, their families—Veska's clipped, practically monosyllabic account of a cousin's disastrous wedding has everyone down to the serving staff howling with mirth—but they're good-natured rather than petty. And they don't push her to bare her entire life story to them. Which is fortunate, because she doubts she could remember the juicy details through the headache.

After lunch they return to work, and by the end of their shift they've decrypted two of the five transmissions and are well along on the other three. They're mostly low-priority, dry reports on supply lines and outposts the Republic already knows about—which would explain why they were so easy to crack—but every scrap of intel counts.

"Not bad for your first day on the job," Pol says, clapping her on the shoulder as they shut down their workstations to leave for the evening.

"Thanks," she says. She picks at the cuff of her jacket, then looks at him and Veska. "I mean it. Thank you."

"Welcome," Veska grunts.

"Grab dinner in the canteen?"

"Sure."

**o.O.o**

"How is she?" Zhar asks.

Bastila opens her eyes. "It's holding," she says. "The new personality is solid—she's a bit disorientated, but seems not to be questioning it too closely."

"Good. You did very well, Bastila."

**o.O.o**

Her bunkmate is snoring loudly when she returns to their quarters that night. Sen smiles a little and toes off her boots, creeping into the 'fresher to clean up without waking her. She takes a quick shower, dons an oversized shirt printed with the Republic Navy's insignia, and crawls into bed. Despite her bunkmate's snores, she falls asleep almost immediately.

She dreams.

Needles, and knives, and bars of burning light. A mirror, reflecting a voiceless shadow that beats its fists against the blood-flecked glass. Her shadow. She reaches out to it—

Fire. A world aflame, blooms of scarlet and orange glowing like molten glass on its night side, plumed serpents of ash and smoke coiling around the day. This is power. This is victory, ruin and corpses and death—

_Something is watching._ Vast and empty and hateful, so hateful, devouring, consuming, destroying—its breath in her ear, its hand on her throat, an unspeakable heaviness dragging at her limbs as it pushes and _pushes_ until she stumble-stumble-falls. Watching. It's watching, and where the stars burn hollow and bitter it's waiting, and it will devour them all—

Her eyes snap open, an unvoiced scream lodged in her throat. She can barely think or see through the pounding against the inside of her skull. It's as if something's fighting to burst out. She's shaking, cold with sweat, her hands twisting at the bedsheets.

Slowly, slowly, the terror fades as reality reasserts itself. She's not in any danger. There are no monsters behind the stars. There are no worlds burning at her command. It was a dream. Nothing more. _Nothing more._

_She feels guilt over her past crimes._

Sen slowly exhales. This is beyond the hangover from hell. This is something else. Something bad.

Her bunkmate is gone, having left for her own shift. Sen would almost prefer it if she were here, snores and all. It's all too easy to get lost in the dark.

**o.O.o**

"When do I begin pressing for intel?"

Zhar looks at her, head-tails twitching slightly in bemusement. "Patience, Padawan. Let her stabilize in her new life before you seek to draw out the knowledge she hid from us." He glances out the viewport, almost wistful. "Not many fallen Jedi get a second chance."

"You pity her," Bastila realizes.

"I pity all those who are consumed by the Dark. And I grieve for their deaths at our hands, and ours at theirs."

Bastila picks at a loose thread at the hem of her tunic. "So Revan's . . . enforced redemption is something of a victory."

"It is absolutely a victory," says Zhar. "For all that she did not choose it, I believe that the apprentice I once taught would have wanted this."

"You taught Revan?"

"Oh, yes. Years ago. She had many Masters, but I was among her first when she came to us on Dantooine. Still rather old for a prospective Jedi, but she had such potential . . . She truly believed in the Jedi way." He shakes his head sadly. "We saw this coming, you know. We had no idea how bad it might get, but we knew that she could become a terrible instrument of the Dark Side. Sometimes I wonder if we might have done more to prevent all this from happening—if, by indulging her attachments and obsessions, we encouraged her down this path . . ."

"Attachments? You mean Malak?"

"Alek, then, but yes. The two of them seemed a perfectly matched pair of troublemakers. Harmless, for the most part, and neither had any great connection to anyone else in the Enclave, so we allowed their friendship to deepen."

Bastila snorts. "And look how that ended."

Zhar throws her a quelling look. "It ended," he says, "in tragedy. In two friends—some even say lovers—willing to kill each other for the sake of power. Such is the allure of the Dark Side. And that is no laughing matter."

"My apologies, Master."

"None needed, but I accept—ah, it appears we've reached the Fleet."

Bastila finds it somewhat difficult to drag herself out of the shuttle when they land in the _Tempest_'s hangar bay once again. Discipline keeps her steps steady and her head held high, with no sign of her inner consternation—but she does not want to return to the endless grind of meditation and battle. The Republic needs, her, though, and she will do her duty. She will do whatever it takes to defend against the Sith.

She pauses at the bottom of the boarding ramp, turning to Zhar, still inside the shuttle. "Are you not coming, Master?" she asks.

"I'm afraid I must return to Dantooine," he says. "Vandar, too, will be leaving the Fleet within the next few weeks."

"I don't know if I can do this alone," Bastila says, unable to hide the shrill edge of desperation in her voice.

"I believe you can, Bastila. You are a very gifted Jedi. And you will not be alone—we are dispatching several Guardians for your protection. But Vandar and I are needed at the Enclave. With so many Jedi falling or being killed, it is more important than ever to successfully train a new generation."

"But—"

"There is no emotion," Zhar says gently.

". . . There is peace," Bastila whispers, bowing her head. She clears her throat. "Yes. Thank you, Master."

"May the Force be with you, Bastila Shan," he says, as the ramp begins to hiss upwards, sealing the vessel.

"And with you," she murmurs.

**o.O.o**

Her bunkmate, as it turns out, is called Aleesa Vann. Aleesa is just as grouchy on Sen's second day on the _Monument-II_ as on her first, but at least Sen knows her name now. That was a fun conversation.

Sen, Pol, and Veska receive a new, high-priority transmission to decode that morning. "We intercepted this just an hour ago," Iden tells them. "It's a missive from the _Leviathan_. So get cracking."

They spend the next four hours poring over the transmission, running it through program after program, staring at the data, trying to squeeze meaning out of the noise. They try brute force, surgical precision, everything in between. Pol mutters to himself throughout the entire effort, curses and snippets of his train of thought. It's annoying, but Sen says nothing, gritting her teeth and focusing on the task at hand. Veska, too, is quiet for the most part, except when Pol's grumbling turns to louder exclamations. Then she rises from her chair, stands behind Pol, and claps a hand over his mouth. He makes a muffled noise of protest. She leans in and says, flatly, "If you don't shut up I will punch you."

"Mmmhghhnnghffnn?"

"No."

"Mmmmph."

Veska is unimpressed. "I mean it."

Pol sighs and nods. She lets go. He gives a lopsided grin. "That bad, eh?"

"Yes."

"My sincerest apologies," Pol says, insincerely.

Sen snorts and, on a whim, tries another possible key. This feels . . . familiar, weirdly so. Muscle memory, almost.

Her monitor beeps—a solution. Breath catching, she tries it—and the ciphertext resolves into clear Basic. "Got it!" she says.

"Get that to Iden straightaway," says Pol, peering at her monitor curiously.

She pings the Ithorian the file and cracks her knuckles, satisfied. Idly she scrolls through the missive. She freezes.

_Lord Malak demands an explanation for the failure of the _Endless_ to hold position during the battle over Ersanne. The Captain will report to the _Leviathan_ by 1900 to answer for his failures._

"Ooh, someone's getting strangled," Pol says.

"Morlissen," says Sen.

"Hmm?"

"Tova Morlissen. The captain."

"How the bloody hell do you remember that kind of stuff?" Pol complains. "I can barely keep the Republic brass straight, much less some Sith captain!"

Sen blinks. "He's—" She breaks off, frowning, because . . . Tova Morlissen is a decent officer, steady in a crisis, a bit uncreative but still effective. Cautious. Perhaps too cautious, but . . .

_He doesn't deserve what's coming to him,_ she thinks, and she wonders why she should care.

"He's what?"

"He must've been on the HoloNet at some point," she says vaguely. He fought during the Mandalorian Wars, so it would make sense for the Republic media to mention his desertion.

It's the only possible explanation.

She presses her fingertips into her eye sockets.

**o.O.o**

It's ship's night. Aleesa is on duty and will be for the next few hours. She has the cabin to herself. So she peels herself out of the jumpsuit, stands in her socks on the cold 'fresher floor, shivering slightly.

She turns on the sink to splash hot water on her face. Scalding hot. It burns, but it's soothing. It makes the wisps around her hairline clump and stick to her forehead and cheeks. Water drips from her nose and chin.

The face in the mirror is . . . hers. Pure and simple. Amber-brown eyes, black hair, skin just a shade too pale under the harsh shipboard lights.

It's wrong.

Her head is killing her.

"What is wrong with me?" she whispers.

"Everything," hisses her reflection.

And she says, "Oh."

The pain in her head turns to white-hot agony. The mirror shatters, silver shards and glassy shrapnel. She's falling. Falling and there is nothing, no ground and no sky and nothing to hold onto. Blood in her mouth, burning in her eyes, singing in her veins. Cold—the dead cold of space, absolute zero barely disturbed by thin streams of photons from distant stars.

Rage.

And Revan remembers.

**o.O.o**

The first missive from her informant arrives at 2251 hours two days after leaving the reprogrammed Sith on board. She laboriously takes the meaningless jumble of letters and runs them through her key with flimsi and stylus, reads the message, and breathes at last.

_ALLWELLMAKINGFRIENDSWITHCOWORKERSSEEMSHAPPYEVERYTH INGFINE._

"Everything is fine," Bastila says to herself. "Everything is absolutely fine."

She burns the message, setting it aflame with the edge of her lightsaber. She smiles as she brushes the ash down the rubbish chute, to be compacted and recycled or jettisoned.

Everything is fine, and Revan's survival is secret, and _she can do this._

**o.O.o**

She cleans up the mirror shards. Her hands are laced with red filigree by the time she's done, a thousand tiny cuts and slices. It doesn't occur to her until she's rinsing them under the tap that she could have used the Force.

And then it becomes apparent that she _couldn't._

The Force is gone. She knows it's out there, can almost feel it, muffled and distant—but she can't reach it, can't touch it. Isolated. Trapped in a crevasse with no way out. She is hyperventilating, panicking, tears springing to her eyes. She doubles over and stumbles to the toilet, dry-heaves until her midsection aches—she's hollow, she thinks wildly, they tore the Force out of her and left her with a mind that isn't hers, knowledge she never learned—

_My name is Revan._ That is fact. Axiomatic. _I am a Jedi—_but she isn't, not really, not anymore; she cast that title aside when she ordered her fleet to enter the Unknown Regions . . .

Her eyes widen. She can't remember what she found. She can't even remember what she was searching for, only that it involved the Mandalorian Wars—and afterwards, afterwards is a blur, fragmented images. Endless sand. Darkness under the water. A cave simmering with the Dark Side . . . Malak, always at her side, but drawing further and further away—

"_Dar'vod_," she breathes. Mandalorian. _No-longer-brother._

She has to think. To . . . to figure this out. Salvage what she can.

Her name is Revan, and she was a Jedi. Her closest, truest friend was called Malak. They fought the Mandalorians together. Drove them back. Destroyed them. And then . . . Something important, something to do with the war. Not the fighting itself. _Why._ Why it happened at all . . .

She wanders to her locker, pulls out a medpack for her still-bleeding hands. She'll come back to the whys and the wherefores later. Everything after the end of the Mandalorian Wars is hidden, somehow. Buried. Later, she'll work through it later.

She was a Sith Lord, though. She remembers that, the heft of armor, the chilly satisfaction of crushing someone's windpipe, the rush of the Dark Side—

Part of her recoils in horror at the thought. It feels . . . perfunctory, though. Following some hidden protocol.

Ah. The Jedi. She was captured, thanks to Malak. Bastila Shan. The Council—she remembers what they did to her. In excruciating detail.

They tried to rewrite her, wall up the Sith and replace her with something unremarkable, something _safe_. She flexes her hands, slimy with a thin coating of antibiotics and kolto, and presses her lips together. She is not safe. In any sense—safe for the Jedi, or safe from them. Doubtless she is under surveillance—she'll have to keep an eye out, ascertain who or how—so any behavior out of character for Sen bloody Tethis will only raise suspicions and make it more difficult for her to . . . what? Give them the slip? And then what?

Her old allies would gladly kill her. The Jedi want to milk her for information—though how they planned to do so given that they tried to _destroy her mind_ is anyone's guess.

No—better to play along, for now. She needs time to recover, to gain some semblance of mental stability.

She can't think of herself as Revan. If she wants to survive this, if she wants to _win_, then for the time being she must be Sen, smuggler turned cryptographer, constructed of the remnants of the Jedi Council's poorly grafted-on mask.

It still feels like a betrayal.

**o.O.o**

_tbc_


	4. Diagnostics

**A/N:** Heads up—midterms are coming. All of the midterms. I am going to be periodically swamped with homework and studying, so updates may become sporadic for a while. Additionally, I've been writing Retrace out of order and pulling the separate sections together when I go back and edit stuff. The problem is that the sections aren't evenly spaced. My buffer of prewritten quick-edit-and-post material is spotty at the best of times and nonexistent at the worst. This is one of the worst. Everything will be better once we reach Taris. (Never thought I'd write _that_ phrase!)

In sum: I'm still writing, but these Sunday/Thursdayish updates probably won't last. The only reason this is on time is that I'm getting tired of setting things up and would like to get to the real action ASAP. It's like cooking broccoli. Good for you, yeah, but let it boil too long and it's absolutely vile. (That is a terrible analogy and my poetic license should be revoked. Also, possibly bad writing advice.)

On a lighter note, many thanks to all you followers, reviewers, and lurkers! Hugs for everyone. On with the show.

**Part 4: Diagnostics**

_In which the small army of OCs is expanded. A wild Tutorial guy appears._

**o.O.o**

Revan heads down to Communications fueled by three hours of fitful sleep, a cup of caf that tried to eat the mug, and a great deal of spite. She spent the night attempting to comb through her memories for clues as to what has been erased and why. She was . . . less successful than she hoped.

Therefore—this. Keeping up appearances, playing the Council's game, to whatever end.

She settles at her workstation, makes small talk with Veska and Pol, and then lets Sen Tethis's implanted skills run on autopilot, the bulk of her attention turned inward.

Revan studied mental shielding during her days as an apprentice at the Jedi enclave on Dantooine—not because it was part of her training, but because it was the only way to keep Master Dorak from discovering her forays into the forbidden areas of the Jedi Archives. Later, on Coruscant under Master Kreia's tutelage, she delved into other, older techniques, predating the Order or originating from sects and philosophies labeled Grey at best and Dark at worst by the High Council.

Her preferred defense is the equivalent of a psychic wall slamming down in front of any prospective invader. It necessitates awareness of one's emotions—incorporates them into the wall, in fact, along with raw willpower—as well as one's vulnerabilities. A wall is no use if an enemy can simply climb over it, or crawl under, or tap a shatterpoint and watch it all come crumbling down.

As such, Revan is quite familiar with the means of examining her own mind.

Whoever did this to her was annoyingly thorough. She doubts it was the Jedi Council alone—their work is at least obvious. She can tell what is programmed behavior and what is not, and choose to follow one or the other as the situation demands; even now, though, sections of memory remain foggy and indistinct, for all she knows they are truth. But there are other places that feel raw as new wounds, as though someone took a butcher's knife to her mind and hacked out the parts they didn't like.

Time and effort will burn off the haze over Revan's life, if not the block separating her from the Force. She has little option but to try. The gaps do not seem quite so easy to deal with. Poking at them leaves her with a feeling of revulsion. Something is warning her not to look too closely.

As if she's ever listened to such warnings.

The only way to fill in the gaps in her memory, she concludes, is to retrace her own steps. Between archived news holos, what little she remembers personally, and the intel at her fingertips as a cryptographer, she should be able to piece together the path she took at the end of the Mandalorian Wars.

Initial work can easily be done here, aboard the _Monument._ But afterwards, if plain data is not enough to trigger her recollections, she may have to go personally. She rather suspects she will. And that is a problem—the Jedi will never leave her alone long enough to slip away on some journey of self-rediscovery.

Well, then. She'll just have to get rid of them somehow.

It occurs to her—a thought heavily flavored by the guilt-ridden ex-criminal in her, hoping for a new life, a fresh start—that she could just . . . not go looking. She could learn to live with a mind full of holes. Come to some kind of acceptance of who she is now, rather than dwelling on who she was.

The side of her that is purely Revan starts snarling at the mere thought of _accepting_ this. Revan despises that kind of willful ignorance—the same as what plagues the Jedi, leaves them stagnant and fossilized in the midst of a violently changing galaxy. She would rather know the truth, no matter how unpleasant or undesirable it might be. Ignorance is weakness_._ And Revan is not weak.

"Oi, Sen, whatever did that chair do to you?"

Sen snaps out of her reverie, startled. She glances down and blinks. Her hands are clamped around the armrests of her chair, so tightly that the plastic is squeaking against the metal frame. Hurriedly she relaxes them, pulls a grimace. "Just a bit frustrated," she says. "Code's giving me trouble this morning."

"Augh, I know," Pol says, making a face. "Iden's laughing at us, I know it."

"At you, maybe," mutters Veska.

Sen snickers and returns to her work.

**o.O.o**

The Jedi Guardians arrive around mid-morning. Two of them—a significant asset in this war, pulled from battle on her behalf. Bastila continues to underestimate her importance to the Republic. It's . . . sobering.

She meets them in the hangar as they disembark their transport, also bringing arms and ammunition for the troopers stationed on the _Tempest._ The first is a tall Bith, his steps long and gliding; the other is a dark-haired human who radiates resentment. Bastila gets the feeling it's mostly directed at her.

"Padawan Shan. I am Jedi Master Iylos," says the Bith, with a graceful bow. "This is Knight Chena Oslar, my former apprentice."

Bastila returns the gesture. "You honor me with your presence, Master Jedi. I—I am not entirely certain what to expect."

"We'll follow you," Chena says. "Everywhere. Because apparently the Council thinks you're more valuable than our troops down on Ersanne."

"I'm sure the Council has its reasons," Iylos says placidly.

Chena sniffs. "Right, _Battle Meditation._ You're, what, a walking morale boost?"

Bastila glowers at her. "Perhaps," she says. "The Admiral seems to think I'm useful enough. And what are you, pray tell, that your presence on Ersanne was deemed unnecessary?"

Chena opens her mouth to retort. Iylos steps in before she can speak. "Peace, the both of you. We are all Jedi, and we carry out our duties as the Council has assigned them. Each of us has our own strength, and our own purpose. We cannot afford to quarrel over whose is most _necessary._"

Chagrined, Bastila bows again and says, "You are right, Master. I apologize, Knight Oslar, for my outburst."

". . . Likewise," Chena grinds out.

Iylos inclines his head. "There we are. That was not so difficult, was it?"

Bastila has a bad feeling about this.

**o.O.o**

Excusing herself from dinner with Veska and Pol after her shift, not particularly interested in meeting the rest of Iden's herd of nerds, Sen makes her way down to the training room. It overlooks the main docking bay, the top half of an entire wall of the chamber converted to windows for a stunning vista of the inside of the bay doors. She supposes it's much prettier when the bay is open, but as they're currently in hyperspace en route to the Corellian sector, leaving the door cracked would be most unwise.

Republic soldiers are arrayed about the training room. Most of them clump together in small groups—squads, she'd guess, laughing and joking with each other as they spar or stretch or exercise. A pack of ensigns jogs around the perimeter of the chamber, passing Sen in a blur of sweat and skin and panting breaths. She waits for the last of them to go, then makes her way further inward.

Her goal here is simple: learn what she's capable of. If the Council has suppressed her ability to defend herself physically along with her ability to use the Force . . . She's hoping they haven't. She's very much hoping they haven't.

It would be just like them, though, she thinks sullenly. Build an identity from the ground up, but leave out the parts that would make it realistic—Sen Tethis is supposed to have been a smuggler, for stars' sakes. Not exactly a peaceful profession.

She twists her mouth sideways, then brightens. There—three troopers sparring with practice swords. Excellent.

"Watch your feet!" shouts one of them, as her immediate opponent fumbles his lunge. She parries and disarms him with quick, economical movements, then lowers her blade and sighs. "Run that again," she says. "And this time, try not to stomp around like a drunken bantha."

"Yeah, no," the man grumbles, bending to retrieve his sword. "Think I'll let Trask take this one for the team."

"You gotta practice, Olen," the third soldier says. "You might be a great shot with a blaster, but half the Sith armada uses energy shields these days."

Olen snorts. "Oh, come on, I'm good enough to hold my own and you know it."

The woman smiles slyly. "Just not against me. Or Trask." Her gaze slides sideways, and locks onto Sen. "Hi," she says, dubious. "Don't think we know you . . ."

She steps forward. "You wouldn't. I just transferred her a couple days ago," she says easily, offering her hand. "Sen Tethis."

"Uh, Evi Mallen," the soldier replies, shaking it. She jerks her head over her shoulder. "Trask Ulgo and Olen Kast. What can we do for you?"

"Mind if I have a turn?"

". . . Why?"

"Well, I'm new," says Sen, "and I want to know how I measure up to you Republic types."

"You say that like you're not," Trask says, frowning.

She shrugs. "I didn't volunteer. I got impressed. Big difference."

"Sounds like there's quite a story in there," says Olen.

Sen winks at him. "You win, I'll tell it."

Olen starts grinning. "Oh, you're on, mystery girl."

Trask and Evi retreat a few steps to give them space; Trask hands her his sword and says, "Good luck."

She hefts the practice sword with a sinking feeling. The balance is like nothing Revan can remember—because Revan trained with a lightsaber, not a vibroblade. And lightsaber blades handle completely differently from metal ones. They have no inherent mass, for one thing, being made of plasma bent into a specific shape by an energy field. For ease of use—and for a certain definition of "ease"—they're fitted with a hilt gyroscope to simulate a weighted blade, but without the Force it's damned tricky to wield a lightsaber.

So when Olen attacks her flank and Sen defaults to muscle memory, it ends . . . badly. Her usual fighting style was based on a combination of speed and strength, both augmented by the Force. But she's been comatose or sedentary for weeks, and she does not have the Force to draw upon, so direct blocking results in jarred hands and a bruised shoulder as Olen's sword edge bashes her guard aside.

Sen skitters back, shaking out her arm, eyes narrowing. All right. Trying again. Olen comes in for another attack, this time aimed at her head—she raises her sword to deflect the blow at an angle only to find her left side stinging. Last-second change of direction. She didn't see it coming.

"Come on," she growls, anger simmering beneath her skin. "Is that the best you can do?"

"Look, it's no fun if I'm beating on a defenseless civilian," Olen says.

_Frack_ that. She darts in, lands a glancing blow to his upper arm that he ignores.

"I think that's enough," he says, stepping back, half-lowering his sword.

"No," she says.

He shrugs—_your funeral_—and goes into a sloppy but bloody terrifying hail of strikes. She staggers, grits her teeth, holds her ground. Why is she fighting fair, again? Oh, right—she's under no obligation to do so. She catches his next strike near the hilt of her sword, absorbs the force of it, reaches up to grab his hand and twist the hilt out of his grip.

"What the—oh for the love of—" Olen lets her, then shifts his hand, takes her wrist, spins her around with his arm around her throat. Sen snarls and struggles in vain—he's too strong and too heavy for her to move, and he's leaning back too far for her to drop into a solid stance; her feet are barely touching the ground. She hisses out through her teeth. No, no, _no_, she's better than this, she could have _destroyed_ him, she would have, she will—

"Easy," a voice says. Trask. "Olen, let go, would you?"

"Not until I'm sure she's not gonna bite me if I do," Olen rumbles.

Sen stiffens, then slumps. "Sorry," she croaks, hating Olen, hating the Jedi. Mostly the Jedi. Olen is just a proxy.

He lets go. She slinks a few steps away, flexing the wrist he'd grabbed. She looks up at him, and Trask, and Evi, and forces a smile. "Guess I'm out of practice," she says with a little laugh.

"Have you even trained at all?" Evi says bluntly. "'Cause that looked like you were just flailing around."

_I can throttle you with my mind._ No, actually, she can't, and even if she could she probably shouldn't. She laughs again, and it feels like choking. "Yeah, well. Never said I was good at this, did I?" _But I was, I am, I am one of the _best_—_

"Sen," Evi says, shaking her head, "you're not a fighter. Don't pretend to be."

Why, hello, there, humiliation. Her face burns. Yet another reason why expressionless masks are a wonderful thing—nobody can see you blush. "Thanks anyway," she says through a rapidly-constricting throat. "I appreciate your time."

She walks away, shaking hands stuffed into her pockets, breathing deep and slow until she no longer wants to kill something.

**o.O.o**

Bastila's head jerks up from her desktop as an all-too-familiar anger comes to a boil at the back of her mind. "Oh, no," she says. "Please, don't do this . . ."

Focusing on the bond, she tries to ascertain what prompted Revan's sudden rage. Without mutual cooperation, as between a bonded Master and Padawan, it's impossible to sense the specifics, but Bastila does get the general feeling that whatever happened, it did not end in death, torture, or permanent maiming. So that's . . . something.

As the minutes pass, the anger begins to fade, and Bastila relaxes marginally. Not for the first time, she wishes Zhar were here. But this is her responsibility, her battle—she will shoulder the burden if it kills her, because she is a Jedi, and this is her duty.

Struck by sudden inspiration, Bastila retreats from her desk to the floor of her quarters, sitting cross-legged with her hands turned palm-upward on her knees. She cracks her neck and winces. Sleeping at the desk is probably not very good for her. Putting her discomfort aside, she sinks into meditation—somewhere between her normal restorative practice and the immersive omniscience of Battle Meditation. But this is focused upon one individual alone.

Bastila concentrates, filling her mind with peaceful thoughts, letting them flow like a gentle current down the bond. And gradually, the anger simmers down to clear calm.

Bastila smiles and returns to herself, fatigued but satisfied. Perhaps this bond will not be as much of a liability as she first believed. Perhaps she _can_ use it—not just to coax out information on the Sith, but to help Sen remain in the Light. To prevent Darth Revan from ever returning.

There's a knock at her door. Bastila winces when she places the presence outside—Chena, still thoroughly displeased with her current assignment. Rising, Bastila answers the door with an air of resignation. "Yes?" she says.

"Dodonna wants us in the war room for a consultation."

"Now?"

"Yes, now," snaps Chena. "Does the Fleet Admiral usually let you take your time in these situations?"

"Usually," Bastila says coolly, "she specifies when and why, as there is a certain degree of trust between us." _Which you lack_ goes unsaid.

"Oh, right. She trusts you to kiss ass and make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

"If you think—" Bastila breaks off. She should not engage, even when provoked. She should be better than these petty quarrels. She should discover _why_ Chena is so hostile, and work to reach an understanding. She really, really should. Just . . . not right now. "Let's go," she says instead, and brushes past the older Knight on her way through the narrow doorway. Chena doesn't quite turn it into a collision, but it comes close.

Bastila is eighty percent sure Chena deliberately steps on her heels as they head towards the war room. She stops when Iylos drifts into view at an intersection and joins them. What a delightful woman.

Dodonna, as it turns out, wants Bastila's input on where she can be most effectively used against the Sith. "I know that you've been working mostly with the Fleet," she says, "but are you able to assist our ground forces as well? Several theaters of war desperately need a push to tip the balance in our favor."

Bastila experiences a sudden, vivid mental image of herself as a talisman for the Republic, shuffled from battle to battle to bring good fortune and swift victory wherever she goes. They will use her until she is used up. Already she dreads using her Battle Meditation, dreads connecting to so many only to feel their lives drowned out by the slaughter. And yet she cannot refuse—what is her comfort, her happiness, in comparison to the thousands if not millions of lives she might save?

"I am at your disposal, Admiral," she says quietly. "Wherever you think I'll do the most good, I can try."

"Knight Oslar, Master Iylos, can you defend Bastila if we dispatch her to, say, Centares, to assist the 307th?"

"We will do our best," says Iylos, behind her and to the right, a soft-spoken shadow.

"Then we'll lay in a course for the Maldrood sector. Breaking the Sith hold there will open the Perlemian Trade Route to Republic ships, granting us access to many more endangered systems." Dodonna smiles. "That will be all."

**o.O.o**

She sees Trask Ulgo again in the mess hall the next day, eating alone. Part of her wants to turn straight around and pretend yesterday never happened, save face, go about her business, forget about it all.

It's a very large part. The problem is that yesterday _did_ happen, and she is going to get herself killed the moment the fighting starts. And it _will_ start, she is certain of that—if not while she plays cryptographer, then once she abandons this farce for good. If she doesn't reconnect to the Force by then, she'll be stuck using blasters, a set of skills she does not have to unlearn—but this during a war fought at relatively close range once boots hit the ground, as energy shields get better and better.

She's a decent shot. Not a great one, but good enough to manage without the Force.

She's a terrible swordswoman like this.

Bracing herself, she plasters a sheepish smile over her face and wanders over to Trask's table. He looks up at her approach and visibly winces. "Oh, hi, Sen," he says warily.

"Hey," she says. "Listen, I wanted to apologize for—"

"No, no, it's fine, really. Kinda scared us, though. Well, me, anyway. You didn't look too happy with how that all turned out, you know?"

"Yeah," she says, dragging the word out. "I . . . wasn't. And I reacted badly. Which was stupid of me, and I'm sorry. But I was wondering if you'd be willing to, uh, help."

"Help?" Trask echoes.

She says bluntly, "Can you teach me how to use a vibroblade?"

Trask stares at her. "Um . . . why do you need to learn?"

"Because we're at war. I might have a desk job, but I'd really rather not be caught helpless if the worst happens. And you saw me—absolutely no idea what I'm doing."

Trask makes a noise that she tentatively labels _guiltily amused_. "Right, yeah. That's . . ." He sighs. "You really want to do this?"

"Yes."

". . . Okay, then. First thing you gotta do is build up some strength. A sword—even a vibroblade—won't do you much good if you don't have the muscle to actually damage the other guy."

"And then?"

"Well, we'll be patrolling the Mid Rim for the next few weeks, I think. Should be long enough to give you a few lessons—we'll need to work out times first. What's your contact info?"

She rattles it off, and he scribbles it on a napkin. "Thank you," she says fervently.

"Hey, no problem. I hear you learn a lot by teaching, too." He wavers, then says, "You want to sit down or something?"

"I can't, I've got messages to crack. But I appreciate it."

"No problem." Trask winces. "Already said that. Sorry."

Sen laughs, inwardly rolling her eyes. "See you around, Trask."

"Yeah, you too," he calls after her.

She practically skips as she leaves the mess for Communications. She doesn't, because that would be one indignity too many, but it's a close thing.

**o.O.o**

They start that night. Sen can only be grateful that the training room is nearly deserted. The last thing she wants is an audience for defeat after embarrassing defeat.

"See, that there's your problem," Trask says after their fourth bout. "You fight like you're a lot stronger than you really are. You keep trying to hack your way through my guard, but since I'm about twice your size, that's . . . kind of ineffective."

"No kidding," Sen mutters, picking up her practice sword. Another bout, another disarmament to look forward to. She glances up at him and says, "So what's the alternative?"

"Avoid trying to out-muscle anyone," says Trask.

"So . . . be quick, then?"

"Not quite. There are styles that rely more on redirecting an attacker, rather than stopping them. Use their momentum against them. Basically . . . help them take _themselves_ down."

She arches an eyebrow at him. "Defense as offense."

"Yep. I'm not an expert at it, but I've learned some. Want to try?"

"All right . . ." It sounds a bit like Soresu, the third form of lightsaber combat—heavily defensive, virtually impenetrable when used by a master, but rather weak when it comes to actually killing or disabling one's opponent. Djem So also claims to turn an attack back on its source, but in her experience it tends to go for ripostes rather than redirects.

Trask's style sounds underhanded. Sneaky. Not the vicious overwhelming force of Juyo, her preferred form, but she's not opposed to trying something new. She'll try anything at this point.

"Okay. Let's start with some basic counters . . ."

**o.O.o**

_tbc_


	5. Planetside

**A/N:** Edits! The formatting at the end of Chapter 2 has been altered yet again on the advice of the marvelous Mithostwen, who pointed out that the dividers for the reprogramming scene were still rather confusing. Derp. Also, a few paragraphs of Chapter 1 have been fixed for consistency with the laws of physics.

It's only been . . . two weeks since the last update! And this is a longish one, yay. If you're chomping at the bit to get to recognizably KOTOR-y stuff, I'm with you, and it's coming. One or two more chapters of pre-gaming, and then the fun begins in earnest. It'll be a party. By which I mean a saga of suffering and woe.

Please note that I am making crap up about planets with stubby little Wookieepedia entries that don't cover the 4000-BBY-or-thereabouts era in any detail. :)

As always, many thanks to everyone who has reviewed, followed, favorited, or lurked—you are awesome and I hope your day is awesome, too.

**Part 5: Planetside**

_In which Dodonna and Bastila get clever._

**o.O.o**

In the briefing room of the _Tempest_, tempers are running rather high.

"What?" Chena bursts out. "You can't mean that we'll be staying behind!"

"Your first priority is protecting Bastila," Dodonna says in a voice like steel. "And since Bastila will not be engaged in direct combat, neither will you. Is that understood, Knight Oslar?"

"But—"

Master Iylos's psychic warning is sharp enough for even Bastila to feel. Chena visibly winces, bowing her head, biting her tongue. "Yes, Admiral," she says.

"May the Force be with you, Master Jedi," says Dodonna, unruffled. She turns on her heel and walks away, leaving Chena to fume, Iylos to disapprove of her fuming, and Bastila to heartily wish that she had been assigned a different set of Guardians.

With only hours left until the fleet drops out of hyperspace and engages the Sith, Bastila retreats to her quarters to prepare herself. Communications with the Republic's 307th have been spotty, but Dodonna seems confident they have enough information to work with.

The Sith chokehold on Centares cuts off Republic access to a large portion of the Perlemian Trade Route, delaying the movement of troops and resources by days or weeks. The planet's main transport hub, Etaron, lacks any clear military targets—there are no facilities to bomb from orbit or atmo that are not surrounded or filled by prohibitive numbers of civilians. It would seem that the Sith have taken their cues from Republic tactics during the early Mandalorian Wars—although this time there's little chance of the enemy simply ignoring the collateral damage in the name of victory. The Republic, Bastila is proud to see confirmed here, has certain lines it will not cross.

The 307th itself is pinned down ten klicks outside of Etaron, in the foothills of the jagged Daryne Mountains. An energy shield protects them from orbital bombardment, but not a ground attack; their numbers have thinned considerably during skirmishes with Sith troops. They have enough gunships and troop transports to empty the entire base of personnel, but once they clear the shield, they're painfully vulnerable.

Therefore—distraction.

**o.O.o**

Two hours of much-needed sleep and a cup of gritty caf later, Bastila checks her messages one last time. Master Zhar has sent her a brief description of his newest class of initiates, who seem a rambunctious and disorderly rabble to Bastila's eye. Still, it's good to hear of life going on as it always has, the Order ensuring its continuance for another generation.

She's also received a confirmation of her transport number and pilot from Dodonna, and a string of numbers from an anonymous address.

_REVANREMEMBERSNOTHINGSTILLEVERYTHINGFINE_.

Bastila disposes of the transcribed message and frowns. The updates are . . . heartening, yes, but woefully spare. She would prefer a more comprehensive look at Revan's status than a constant stream of vague _everything fine._ Quickly, she scribbles out an appropriate response, encodes it, and sends it on its way.

The ship-wide intercom crackles. "Forty minutes to the Centares system," a voice says coolly. "All pilots to their stations. All medical personnel on standby. Forty minutes to contact."

She takes a deep breath. The plan does not call for her to directly face the enemy. It should prove no different from any of the battles she's experienced with the Fleet—easier, perhaps, as the distances involved are much smaller. Tens of kilometers rather than tens of thousands.

All she has to do is help nine hundred or so soldiers, rather than the thousands involved in a space battle.

And yet she's afraid.

Bastila gathers her gear and meets Chena and Iylos just outside the secondary hangar. Iylos is, as ever, calm and collected; Chena's visible agitation puts Bastila on edge as she paces back and forth in front of the blast doors.

"Are you ready?" Iylos asks gently.

Bastila never feels ready for this. "Yes," she says.

"Finally," mutters Chena.

"If I might venture a suggestion," says Iylos, in much sharper tones, "antagonizing each other will not win us this or any other battle. _Stop it,_ young one. Your behavior is unbecoming of a Jedi."

Red-faced, Chena mumbles something contrite. Bastila wonders what she was like as an apprentice. More to the point, she wonders how anyone so resentful and abrasive ever managed to be made a Jedi Knight.

They meet their pilot at the boarding ramp of their innocuous transport. He's in his mid-thirties, brown-haired, sporting an unsightly yellow-orange flight jacket of no design Bastila has ever seen. "Master Jedi. I'm Lieutenant Carth Onasi," the man says, snapping off a sharp salute.

"Admiral Dodonna tells me you're one of the Republic's best pilots," Iylos says.

"I am," Onasi says matter-of-factly. "I'll get you down to Centares safe and sound."

"I should hope so," says Bastila, "or this entire endeavor will have been for nothing."

Onasi raises an eyebrow at her. "With respect, ma'am, you haven't seen me fly."

They board the transport, an unmarked craft in the angular style of Mid Rim shipyards. There's one seat next to Onasi's, and two situated just behind at knee-knocking distance; Iylos serenely takes the front, leaving Bastila and Chena to clamber into the back. Bastila folds her hands in her lap and attempts to give the appearance of total composure. Chena's long limbs prove a liability—her legs jut out at an angle to the back of the pilot's chair, and she crosses her arms with a fierce scowl as the canopy descends and locks with a faint hiss.

"Hope everybody used the 'fresher," Onasi says cheerfully.

"This is not an appropriate time for—for that kind of humor!" Bastila bursts out.

"Sorry, ma'am, just looking out for my passengers' personal comfort," he says, unrepentant.

Chena snorts.

"_Five minutes to Centares space,_" the cool voice announces.

Bastila's fingers tighten convulsively. The anticipation is . . . not worse than an actual battle, there's very little that _is_ worse, but during combat there's no time to think. No time for her fears to burrow deep into her mind like parasites, sapping her confidence, her resolve.

_There is no emotion, there is peace_. Cold comfort, sometimes, in the hideously elastic moments just before the firing starts, but true nonetheless. The Force buoys her up, keeps her afloat even as the fear builds to fever pitch.

"Sixty seconds," Onasi says distantly.

_There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion—_

"Nervous?" Chena says.

"Please, don't," Bastila says shortly.

Chena huffs. "Look, I've heard the stories. Don't know how much I believe them, but if half of them are true, you've got nothing to worry about. You've done this before. You can do it again."

Bastila stares at her. "Oh. Erm. Thank you."

"Dropping out of hyperspace in three . . . two . . . one . . ."

The hum of the _Tempest_'s hyperdrive cuts out, replaced by the staccato pulse of its turbolasers. The bay doors groan open. Bastila gets a glimpse of the blue-green sphere of Centares before Onasi takes off along with a full squadron of Republic starfighters.

The plan is fairly simple: Dodonna's fleet will serve as a diversion until the 307th can retake Etaron. Bastila's presence and abilities are no longer so secret; the Sith will expect her to remain aboard the _Tempest_ and use her Battle Meditation to keep the fight in the Republic's favor. As such, most of their attention and firepower will be focused on the space battle rather than Centares' surface.

In theory.

Bastila swallows hard as Onasi guides their transport towards the planet. The first deaths prickle the edges of her awareness, less pronounced than they would be if she were connected to the fleets. Even so, she winces as a blast from a Sith cruiser punches through the center of a fighter squadron, vaporizing three and disabling two more.

The transport judders. Several alarms begin shrilling. Bastila grips her harness and closes her eyes.

"Dammit. They've spotted us," Onasi says. "Guess a single nondescript rust bucket is kinda suspicious in the middle of a kriffing battlefield—"

"Please be quiet," Bastila says.

"Excuse me?"

"I am trying to make sure the Sith fighters currently pursuing us find better things to do with themselves. You are interfering with my concentration."

"What is this, some kind of—"

"Jedi mind trick thing," Chena says airily. "You might want to listen to her, Lieutenant; she's probably saving our lives—"

"Ahem," says Bastila.

Chena snickers but complies. Bastila does not understand her, at all, and doesn't have the mental space to speculate—heightening Onasi's reflexes and awareness while fogging the minds of their Sith hunters is quite enough for now. Harder still is resisting the urge to extend her connection to every ship within reach. A great many, as the Republic fleet dropped out of hyperspace practically on top of the Sith. The problem is that suddenly _ceasing_ her Battle Meditation—which she will have to do when and if they reach the 307th—might clue in the Sith that she is not with the fleet.

Bastila hisses through her teeth as the Sith fighters are attacked from behind by a Republic cruiser with a sharp-eyed quad laser gunner—several die within seconds, and the others panic and scatter into disarray, breaking their tight formation to be picked off.

"Wow," says Onasi. "That was . . . wow. They're usually not that stupid."

"You've never fought with me before, have you?" Bastila says with a half-smile.

"Nope." He swoops the transport around a chunk of debris from one of the damaged capital ships, then executes an elegant dive into the clear space of Centares' gravity well. "They called me in special for this, said they wanted—_fracking hell!_"

A beam of coruscating red light slashes up from the blue-green crescent before them. Onasi jinks to port—not fast enough to avoid the very edge of the beam. Several more alarms begin to shriek.

"They've got a ground turbolaser?" he yelps, wrenching the ship sideways to avoid another blast.

"It would appear so," Iylos says. "How are our shields, Lieutenant?"

"What shields?"

Chena sits up, and promptly falls back as Onasi's maneuvering presses her into her seat. "Turbolasers are awful at targeting small ships," she says. "Firing rate's too slow—how is this bastard locking on us?"

Bastila reaches out through the Force. There—a whirlpool, fouled by the Dark Side, thick and hateful. "Force-sensitive," she says distantly.

"Can you stop them?"

She's trying, encouraging the gunner to become distracted, to hesitate. The Force-sensitive's mental shields are tight, though, and familiar. Like Revan's, they will not be breached by a show of psychic strength. "No," she admits.

"Great," Onasi mutters. "Okay. New plan."

Their ship heaves to starboard, skimming the fringe of the Centarian atmosphere somewhere between dusk and full night. Bastila focuses on Onasi to the exclusion of all else, not knowing what he intends to do but trusting that he'll do _something_.

"Come on come on come on come on," he says under his breath.

Bastila's eyes go wide as she sees what's ahead. Fragments and chunks of a large ship are falling towards the planet, building speed, glowing with heat, trailing smoke—Onasi takes them in perilously close as the turbolaser fires again.

"You're not—" Chena begins.

"Yep," says Onasi. "Sorry."

He slams on the retrothrusters, bringing the transport to a lateral standstill. Then, as the explosion of one of the fragments rocks the ship, he cuts all power—everything but minimal life support.

They fall.

"An . . . interesting plan," says Iylos, sounding nauseous. "I will attempt to mask our presences in case the Sith are unconvinced."

"Good, 'cause I'd hate to have gone to all that trouble to make us look dead for nothing."

**o.O.o**

Onasi reengages the engines far too close to the surface for Bastila's peace of mind, although Chena seems delighted by the entire experience. They fly low over the dark plains until they reach the Republic base, a smattering of low fortified structures under a soft-glowing violet energy dome. Passing through the shield raises the hairs on the back of Bastila's neck, but it otherwise has no effect.

They touch down on the landing pad among the 307th's grounded gunships. Onasi pops open the canopy, and the four of them climb out of the ship with varying degrees of relief, taking care to avoid the friction-heated sides of the unshielded vessel.

Bastila inhales. The air is somewhat thinner than she is used to, as they are nearly two kilometers above sea level on a world with just below average atmospheric oxygen. It smells of summer and fuel and ozone and warm earth—Bastila tries to remember how long it's been since she breathed a real atmosphere, one not scoured of all character by constant recycling and air scrubbers. This place reminds her of Dantooine. Of home, if a Jedi can have such a thing.

An aide-de-camp jogs up to them, eyes shining with renewed hope. "Oh, thank the Force, you made it! Padawan Shan, Colonel Tullan is waiting for you in the command center," he says.

"Lead the way, then," says Bastila.

Colonel Tullan, a middle-aged Kiffar with green facial tattoos and scarred armor, is more reserved in his greeting, giving the Jedi a smart salute; they bow as Onasi copies the Colonel.

"I won't lie, Master Jedi," Tullan says in a voice like gargled rocks, "the situation down here is bad. I'd guess you've already encountered the Sith battery on your way in?"

"We did," Bastila says. "And unfortunately, that encounter may have compromised our element of surprise. Hopefully not, but . . ." It all depends on whether or not the Sith believe them truly dead.

Tullan grimaces. "Understood. We'll have to move quickly, then. The faster we take Etaron, the better."

"How soon can you depart?" asks Iylos.

The grimace becomes a dangerous grin. "Half an hour to get everyone awake and into the gunships. That soon enough for you, Master Jedi?"

"Excellent."

Tullan turns to Bastila. "Can we expect your assistance during this fight?"

"Yes," she says, "although I will not be joining you on the front lines. My abilities require a more . . . serene environment to function best."

"How far can you go?"

"Several thousand kilometers, so you're in no danger of going out of range," she says.

"All right. I'll leave you in the capable hands of Sergeant Mersh's squad, just in case."

"That will be more than adequate, thank you."

Tullan nods. "Then let's take back the city."

**o.O.o**

Republic soldiers board their gunships for quick egress from the base, Colonel Tullan directing them. Bastila, Chena, and Iylos remain in the command center among the holo-readouts and comms equipment, connecting them to the Fleet, while Sergeant Mersh stations her troops at choke points within the structure.

Bastila contacts Admiral Dodonna before the 307th moves out, to inform her of the Sith turbolaser. "It's going to tear our gunships apart the instant they clear the shield," she says. "Is there any way to draw its attention towards the battle above?"

". . . We're taking heavy casualties up here," Dodonna says slowly. "I'm reluctant to divert any of our ships at this point, not while we're in such a tenuous position."

"If we take Etaron, the Sith will be unable to refuel or resupply from the planet. And if we can destroy or commandeer that turbolaser, so much the better."

"You think you can do that?"

"Yes," says Bastila.

Dodonna hesitates, then audibly sighs. "All right. I'm sending the _Unconquered_ and a squadron of bombers your way. If you can, please . . . help them."

"Thank you, Admiral. ETA?"

"Ten minutes."

"Shan out." She switches the comms channel to Tullan's. "Did you catch all that?"

"I did. Acknowledged, Master Jedi. Ten minutes."

It seems to work—the incoming Republic ships draw the turbolaser's fire, the 307th gunships take off unmolested, and everything appears to be going according to plan.

Then, two klicks out from the base, a dozen Republic lives flare and disappear in Bastila's mind. Her breath hitches. _Missiles and gunfire, panicked shouting—_

"They knew we were coming," she says rapidly, standing up as the comm line explodes into curses and reports of Sith tanks and infantry lying in wait in the trees. "They were waiting for us, they knew we made it down here . . . and they're coming this way."

"Wait, what just happened?" Onasi demands as Mersh orders her troops to stand ready.

"Ambush, that's what," Chena says. "Which means they're not going to just sit around shooting at the sky—"

Bastila flinches. Onasi makes an abortive movement as if he intended to take her arm in support. She pinches the bridge of her nose. "We lost another gunship," she murmurs. "Turbolaser. They won't miss."

"Even with your mind-thing?" says Onasi.

"I can make the pilots faster to react, but I can't affect the gunner, I told you!"

"Easy, Jedi. There's gotta be something else we can do," Sergeant Mersh says clippedly, her antennae twitching in agitation. "That's what you're here for, right?"

Bastila glares at the Rodian. "From here, I can do nothing!"

"So we go somewhere else," Chena says. "The regular troops'll have a hell of a time facing down a Force-sensitive even if they do get to Etaron. But three Jedi? We've got a chance."

"Fight our way to the gunner on our own, you mean?"

"We've been doing this kind of thing for the past year, Shan." Chena watches her, eyes going narrow. "You're afraid."

"Well, yes," she snaps, "seeing as the one time I did fight the enemy face to face, four Jedi Knights, including my own Master, were killed by a bloody Sith Lord!"

"Right," says Chena. "And then _you_ killed Darth Revan."

Bastila nearly chokes. _This_ is what they're saying? Bad enough that anyone knows about that particular, disastrous mission, but to believe Revan is dead and gone, and that _Bastila_ killed her? It's—it's unthinkable, absurd. The only reason she survived was because of Malak's sudden, if somewhat inevitable, betrayal. If she'd actually _fought_ Revan . . .

"That was—different," she says stiffly.

"No, it wasn't," insists Chena. "Listen, Shan, I don't care how scared you are right now and I don't care what you want. The Republic _needs_ this planet. It needs you."

"And hey," adds Onasi, "chances are, if they're manning a giant gun instead of slicing people to bits with their lightsaber, our Force-user isn't an actual full-on Sith Lord."

Bastila's hand drifts to the lightsaber at her side. Her fingers close around the cold cylinder, and she forces herself to let go of the instinctual panic. She can do this. No—she must do this. There is no choice, there is no fear, there is only necessity, and the Force guiding her.

"Very well," she says. "Onasi, can you pilot one of the remaining gunships?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good. Sergeant Mersh, gather your squad. Let's go."

**o.O.o**

The flight to Etaron is a tense, quiet affair. Bastila keeps the comm line open to the other gunships—some have broken through the Sith lines, but far too many are caught between the mountains and the tanks, unable to arc around for an easier approach now that they've been spotted. The turbolaser is less of a threat now that the ships have touched down behind the cover of a small rise, but they've only returned to the status quo before Bastila's arrival, albeit a few kilometers closer to their goal, now bolstered by Battle Meditation, and under threat from the Sith tanks.

Tullan listens to her terse description of the new plan and says only, "Do it. Fast."

Between cover of night, Battle Meditation, Iylos's Force concealment, and Onasi's pure skill, they avoid detection by the Sith, detouring far to the south of the ongoing skirmish before curving back towards Etaron. And then the towers of the city are rising before them like beacons in the dark, and Onasi glances back at her.

"Now," she says.

He opens the throttle to maximum, accelerating to nearly two hundred kilometers per hour while taking a madly weaving flight path towards the Hub, the spaceport's largest docking facility and the Sith's base of operations.

The turbolaser locks onto them. Fires. Onasi whoops as it misses by a hair's breadth, gaining them precious seconds while it recharges. In that time, they reach the Hub, decelerate, land, and disembark, Jedi, soldiers, and pilot alike sprinting away from the ship towards the cover of the surrounding buildings.

Not a moment too soon—the abandoned gunship explodes at their backs, nearly knocking Bastila off her feet. She stumbles into Iylos, who steadies her, then propels her forward with a gentle shove—they keep running.

"Everybody make it?" Mersh barks out as they slam up against the blast doors of the nearest enclosed hangar.

"Looks like, Sarge," one of her troops says. "Ten plus four. Heh, fourteen's unlucky on Pelevarn II . . ."

"Cut the chatter."

"Cutting it, ma'am."

"Okay, so we're too close for them to shoot at now. How are we getting to the gunner?" asks Onasi.

Bastila extends her senses throughout the buildings around them—the turbolaser is situated just behind and above the ATC tower, she saw that from their approach. She notes the arrangement of Sith troopers at intervals throughout the twisting corridors of the warren-like facility. "We may need to fight our way through," she says reluctantly.

Chena ignites her blue lightsaber. "Let's not waste any time, then."

**o.O.o**

Mersh's squad, Onasi, Iylos, and Chena fight as if they've served together for years. Bastila feels oddly clumsy beside them, with so much of her attention taken up by maintaining her connection to the beleaguered 307th, the _Unconquered_, and her immediate comrades. She manages to deflect blaster bolts back at their sources fairly well, the motions automatic after years of training, but she leaves the active offense and close-in fighting to the Jedi Guardians.

Sith soldiers fall before them, blank white corridor after blank white corridor blurring together in a haze of shining multicolored lights and dull brassy armor and screaming. She becomes an extension of the Force, flowing with the tides as they flow through her, without room for thought or fear.

The _Unconquered_ is in danger—she is with the fighter squadron soaring around to defend it, harrying any Sith ships that get too close. The tanks attacking the 307th are about to unleash a devastating barrage—she is with the drivers and the gunners, making them clumsy and indecisive, fouling their aim. A platoon of Sith soldiers awaits them around the next corner—she is with Iylos as he molds the Force into a wave that knocks them off their feet or into each other, she is with Mersh's squad as they pick off the fallen Sith, she is with Chena as she sprints towards the blast doors at the end of the hall and begins cutting through.

This is it.

The rest of the group catches up to Chena. She kicks the molten-edged circle of durasteel out of the way and ducks through the gap. Bastila sees-hears-feels the sniper's bolt as it lances towards the Guardian, sees-hears-feels her lightsaber rise to redirect it. It becomes a web of blue light protecting the gap as Iylos and Bastila clear it and join her in shielding Onasi, Mersh, and her troops from the deadly crossfire.

Bastila takes in the situation between flashes of yellow and red. The turbolaser mounted on the roof of a nearby building. The narrow walkway between their structure and the ATC tower. The surrounding rooftops, bristling with Sith, forming an impassable gauntlet. Under normal circumstances, that is.

Bastila sinks ever deeper into the Force. She gives Chena and Iylos a detached nod.

The two Guardians spring forward, leaving her to defend the squad as the last of them scrambles onto the walkway. Iylos leaps and Force-pushes several Sith off their rooftop, landing lightly and slicing his way through the rest until he can jump to the next roof. Chena mirrors him on the other side of the walkway as Mersh and her squad take out more distant foes with eerie accuracy.

_The Force fights with me._ She is a weapon, and it is the hand that wields her.

They push on, gaining ground. They are too close and too low for the turbolaser to target them, but the gunner has ceased firing even at more accessible targets. The Force shudders. Something is wrong . . .

A lightsaber snap-hisses to life nearby, and the Force boils with uncontrolled hate.

Bastila whirls to block the Sith's attack, her concentration slipping. The Sith grins at her, eyes clouded as if by cataracts, stained putrid orange in the light of their crossed blades. "Hello, little Jedi," he hisses.

"_Take him down!_" Mersh roars.

The Sith laughs and bats the frenzied bolts away as if they're flies. Before Bastila can use his distraction to her advantage, he bursts into motion, somersaulting over her and landing in the midst of the soldiers. One, two, four are cut down within seconds. Bastila darts in, attacks him from behind. He parries carelessly and extends a hand, clenching it into a fist. Bastila chokes as the very air in her lungs is ripped away—the Sith lifts her half a meter off the ground as she scrabbles at her throat, desperate, panicking—

Blue light.

Chena and Iylos fall upon the Sith in an avalanche of brilliant blue. Even without Battle Meditation, they move in tandem, alternating between attacking the Sith and defending each other. They turn Ataru, traditionally an acrobatic form, into a veritable dance, spinning and leaping and tumbling together. The Sith snarls as he is driven back, away from Bastila; his focus broken, her windpipe opens and she falls to the walkway grating on her hands and knees, wheezing.

"C'mon, get up," Onasi says, tugging at her. "Shan, you've got to stand up, we have to secure that turbolaser . . ."

"You heard the flyboy," Mersh grates. "Get to it."

She looks at the sergeant and her jaw drops. "Oh—your arm—"

Mersh's right arm hangs limp at her side, cut to the bone at the shoulder by the Sith's lightsaber. She shakes her head. "No time for that. Up."

Bastila takes Onasi's hand for support. Staggering slightly, she surveys what's left of Mersh's troops—five of them, two wounded but not fatally, plus Mersh herself. The Sith is still fighting the Guardians, arcs of blue and red searing through the darkness.

She reestablishes a thin connection to the 307th outside the city—no longer pinned down by the turbolaser, they've regrouped and are pushing forward, if slowly. The _Unconquered_—still flying, battered but surviving the assault of no less than three Sith frigates.

"You okay?" asks Onasi.

"I'm fine," says Bastila. She looks each of the remaining Republic soldiers in the eye, one by one. "We're going to win this," she says, impressing upon them a confidence she doesn't feel.

"If we get to that damn gun," says Mersh.

They make their way over the catwalk under sporadic fire from enemy reinforcements as Chena and Iylos drive the Sith onto an adjacent rooftop. The turbolaser's seat stands empty, surrounded by blinking readouts and targeting computers.

The chattering private gives it an assessing look. "Who wants to shoot shit?"

"Thanks for volunteering," Mersh says, and he grins and hops into the chair. The sergeant adds, "Give Tullan's boys a window, would you?"

"With pleasure," says the private, directing the turbolaser towards the 307th's attackers.

"_Bastila!_"

Chena's distress surges through the Force. Bastila turns to Mersh. "Can you hold this position?" she says quickly.

The sergeant pauses only to fire a shot at an encroaching Sith trooper. "Yes."

"Hold it, then." She takes a running leap onto the rooftop where Chena and Iylos are dueling the Sith, dodging or deflecting blaster bolts as she goes—the Sith is _laughing_, wearing the Guardians down even as a sickly, waxen pallor creeps over him, the Dark Side roiling around him.

"Is this really the best the Jedi can manage?" he cackles. "I had heard you were _capable_! This is practically a joke!"

"Joke's on you," Chena says, whirling into a vicious flensing attack, and Bastila would, under other circumstances, beat her head against the nearest hard surface, because _really_?

She dives into the fray from the side, catching the Sith off-guard. He barely blocks her strike in time, cursing.

He's outnumbered and outmatched, and he knows it. She can see it in his dulled eyes—a spark of desperation, the kind of suicidal defiance that only ever ends in tears. The three Jedi herd him ever closer to the edge of the roof, and with every step he takes in retreat, he redoubles his ferocity.

"I—will—not—be—defeated!" he bellows, hammering at Chena's guard to no avail, forced to abandon his attack to prevent Bastila from removing a limb.

"Ambitious, aren't we," Iylos says evenly, lunging.

Without warning, the Sith bares his teeth and jumps high into the air. He flips over their heads, lands—before Bastila or the Guardians can react, he drives his lightsaber into Iylos's chest from behind.

Chena screams, a wordless cry of horror and denial, as Iylos falls forward and slides off the rooftop, landing in a crumpled heap ten meters below.

"Next," whispers the Sith.

Chena lurches towards him, Bastila scrambling to run interference as she leaves herself wide open to counterattack. The dance becomes a furious brawl. Chena hacks at the Sith's upraised lightsaber as if determined to break the plasma beam through sheer force of will while Bastila tries to sneak past his guard. He withstands Chena's assault and avoids Bastila's by pushing her aside with the Force. But this proves his undoing—his outstretched hand is well within Chena's striking range.

She removes it. He gasps, curls in over it instinctively. Chena kicks his remaining hand aside, lightsaber and all, and brings her blade down on the back of his neck.

The waves calm, the water clears with his death. Bastila lowers her lightsaber, numb.

"Iylos!" Chena shouts, running towards the roof's edge as if about to jump off. Bastila catches her arm, holds fast.

"Don't," she says, "please, don't, he's gone, there's nothing you can do—"

Tears stream down Chena's face. "_No!_ We, we have to—"

"We have to open the way for the 307th," Bastila says miserably. "Please, Chena. The mission . . ."

She stares at Bastila, breathing ragged and fast, lightsaber humming at her side. "I—yes," she says with difficulty, wiping her cheeks with the back of her free hand. "I know. I know."

"It's all right," Bastila says.

It's not.

**o.O.o**

In the end, it takes the Republic three days to more or less clear the Centares system of Sith. The 307th breaks through the line of tanks with the help of the captured turbolaser, and makes its way into Etaron. By noon, they've secured the Hub; by sundown, most of the Sith ground forces have surrendered.

The fleets continue to pound at each other for another day before the Sith go into full retreat, unable to land for repairs on Centares and unwilling to face Dodonna's finest with Bastila backing them. And then it's nothing but mop-up, rooting out the remnants.

When it's over, Lieutenant Onasi appropriates another transport from one of the hangars and flies Bastila and Chena back to the _Tempest_. Chena has barely said a word since her outburst after Iylos's death, killing Sith soldiers with mechanistic detachment as they tried to prevent the Republic capture of Etaron; now, she sits in silence, her old Master's lightsaber resting beside her own at her hip.

Bastila can think of a hundred platitudes to offer her, and none of them capture the truth of the matter. They are hollow, useless things in the face of such grief.

_There is no emotion?_ That's a lie. Any being with a modicum of empathy can see otherwise.

**o.O.o**

_tbc_


	6. Reconstruction

**A/N: **Yay, I'm early this time! Chapter 7 will probably be posted Thursday or Friday of next week. Thanks for bearing with me.

Warning for extremely salty language, angst, innuendos, and alcohol.

Many thanks to all you lovely reviewers, followers, and lurkers, and welcome to the newcomers. Your support for this fic has been incredible. Much love!

**Part 6: Reconstruction**

_In which Bastila worries and Revan gets a little drunk._

**o.O.o**

Her lessons with Trask progressing steadily, Sen's next priority is determining how the Jedi are keeping an eye on her. As incompetent as they can be, she doubts they'd be so foolish as to leave her completely unsupervised, even with apparent amnesia and cut off from the Force.

So—suspects. Her watchers must have strong ties to the Jedi Order. Bonds of loyalty—a debt owed, or perhaps just credits earned. That's an avenue of inquiry to pursue later. She can access personal account statements from her workstation if necessary, but money alone won't tell her much.

They must also be able to communicate with the Jedi. Thousands of transmissions stream to and from the _Monument_ at all hours, most of them reports and status updates and orders from on high. Personal messages tend to be sent in data packets at predetermined times, so they'll be relatively easy to intercept and read if she needs to.

But before she goes wading through the quagmire of inanity that is personal correspondence, she'll have to check for other transmissions. Anything out of the ordinary—patterns that shouldn't be there, unusual encryptions, references to Revan . . . She sets up a tracking program to report trends and outliers, leaves it running while she, Veska, and Pol dissect Sith communiqués.

It's a waiting game, now. She can keep her eyes open for odd behavior among the people she has regular contact with, but lacking the ability to gauge motivations and deceptions through the Force, she trusts hard data far more than her own instincts.

**o.O.o**

"Chena . . .?"

"I'm fine."

Bastila wants to contradict her, wants to force her to confront the grief that is visibly destroying her, but there's no time—the blast doors hiss open, and they enter the _Tempest_'s war room where Dodonna is finishing her debriefing of several Republic officers via holocomm.

"Good work out there," the Admiral says. "Keep an eye on the situation in Etaron, but for now, dismissed."

The holograms salute and flicker out, and the room's lights brighten, banishing the eerie blue glow. Dodonna turns to the Jedi—to Chena. "My condolences, Knight Oslar," she says. "Colonel Tullan informed me of your loss in his report. Master Iylos will be sorely missed."

Chena's frozen, blank expression does not change. "Yes, Admiral," she says.

Dodonna scrutinizes her for a moment, then sighs near-imperceptibly. "Bastila. Are you prepared to engage in further ground battles if necessary?"

"I am," she says. What other option does she have—refusal? No. And perhaps this is for the best. Concentrating on winning the war distances her from the horrors it has inflicted on those fighting it—Sergeant Mersh, at risk of losing her arm; her squad, half slaughtered by the Sith; Iylos, left broken in the dust with a hole burned through his spine.

Her own Master, lost to the void, his body never recovered from the wreckage of the _Crusader_.

"Then I'm sending you to aid in the defense of Serenno. In all likelihood it will remain an orbital conflict, but be prepared to move to the surface should the Sith break through."

"Serenno?" Bastila says, frowning. "I was under the impression that the Great Houses were not interested in Republic aid."

"They weren't," Dodonna says with a grimace, "until the Sith actually began threatening them. They have stated their preferred neutrality on multiple occasions, but when their system came under attack and their planet's obscene wealth was jeopardized, they requested reinforcements. Specifically, you."

"Why me?"

"Because you're swiftly becoming the single most valuable asset the Republic has. They want to know how serious we are about an alliance—how much we want their support, perhaps even their membership in the Republic. They're testing us."

"No pressure," mutters Chena.

"How did you find Lieutenant Onasi as a pilot?" asks Dodonna.

"Capable, adaptive, and professional under fire, if a bit . . . idiosyncratic," Bastila says haltingly. "Why?"

"I'm assigning him to you for the journey to Serenno."

**o.O.o**

Well, now. Here's an interesting pattern: every other day since her awakening, between 2200 and 2300 hours Fleet standard time, a short transmission has been sent from the _Monument_ to the _Tempest_. It's not a normal report for Command; those are sent out at other times and from consistent terminals. These messages originate from several locations around the ship, but the login information remains the same. Anonymous, not connected to any staff accounts, but authorized nonetheless.

Sen drums her fingers against the keypad, thinking. Then she checks the timestamp of the latest message—last night, 2247. The next should therefore be sent out tomorrow. She can set an alert for whenever the informant logs on, but the _Monument_ is nearly a kilometer in length—she probably won't be able to catch them in the act. Not in person, at any rate. She doesn't need to, though; she merely needs to identify the informant.

For that, she slips into the maintenance droids' directory and carefully tweaks the schedules of a few of them. Nobody ever really thinks about droids—nonliving, lacking a Force signature, programmed for subservience, periodically mind-wiped to quash any developing personality or individual desires. They're beneath notice. And that makes them dangerous.

Droids—

_HK-47._

She remembers HK. Its—_his_, she asked it whether it wanted a gendered pronoun and it said _he_—his favorite strategy to get close to a target, if he wasn't allowed to just come in all guns blazing, was to pose as a protocol droid. The fact that he could imitate the prim mannerisms of most protocol droids so well was not surprising, but it was certainly amusing, even if Malak never got the joke—

_Complaint: The bald meatbag is threatening to deactivate me again, Master. Permission to reciprocate?_

Another clear spot in her memory, another piece of her life reclaimed. She smirks. The Jedi Council is a body of meddlesome fools . . . and they can't even meddle effectively.

Cheered, she puts the finishing touches on a program that will hopefully crack at least a few Sith codes by tomorrow. Some lower-priority transmissions are left with lazy encryptions that can be brute-forced; the more interesting ones take actual creativity to break. Or an unfair advantage, like having been present when Saul Karath's resident cryptographic experts explained the processes to herself and Malak.

Should she be quite this happy about thwarting her former allies' plans in a multitude of small but significant ways? Probably not. Sen Tethis is supposed to find that kind of thing necessary but tragic, because . . . all life is sacred, apparently, even that of the Sith? And she's _ever_ so remorseful for killing people while smuggling nonexistent narcotics and weaponry on the Outer Rim.

The reaction is obviously artificial. There's no turning point, no watershed moment, no narrative arc to the change in her supposed character—she's simply captured by the Republic and suddenly becomes a guilt-ridden atoner.

Hilarious.

"All right, people, fun's over, go rest those weary brains before they leak out of your cranial orifices," Iden calls out. "Enjoy your day off, if you must be obnoxious, and don't lord it over us poor saps who have to wait for our turn."

Pol cackles, standing up and stretching until his vertebrae pop. "I'm beat," he says. "Anyone for dinner and a drink?"

"Long as it's not rotgut," says Veska, "I'm for it."

"Wouldn't dream of it. I'm not that cruel. Sen?"

"Sure," she says. "What's this about rotgut?"

Pol waves a hand, leading the way to the canteen. "Oh, it was before your time. Some ingenious third-shifter went and set up a whole distillery in a storage closet. Had a deal going with the janitorial staff, I'd bet—anyway, she had it on tap during the most miserable not-actually-shore-leave in the history of the Fleet—we were lightyears away from any planets without a space station in sight—and a bloody fantastic time was had by all. We think."

Sen smirks. "Too wasted to remember?"

"I remember," Veska says. "Lot of singing involved. And seducing the second- and third-shifters. And singing while f—"

"Veska! Such slander," Pol splutters, red-faced.

"Fact. I have evidence," Veska says mildly. "Amazing performance, by the way."

"You _watched?!_"

"Unfortunately. Was hard to avoid, you bastard."

"Do we know who was responsible for all this?" Sen says with a grin.

"Lovely girl—Aleesa something or other."

She startles. "Tall, blond, grouchy? My _roommate?_"

"That's the one," Pol says. "Ah, here we are."

The canteen is packed with off-duty personnel, ranging from soldiers to engineers to pilots. The _Monument-II_ is an old ship; it served during the war with Exar Kun, and has been relegated to mostly administrative duties as faster, deadlier ships are brought into service against the Sith. In a pinch, it can be used as support for a better-equipped vessel, but currently it's merely patrolling less-threatened space lanes. The brass can afford to allow the crew time off with some kind of regularity.

Sen, Pol, and Veska collect their meals from the serving line, then search for a table. It's a difficult prospect: the swarms of people leave very few open seats in groups of three. Eventually Veska grows impatient with all the hovering and drags Pol and Sen to the far wall, against which they sit and eat off their trays in their laps, pending an available spot.

"Ooh, Veska! I heard someone down in Engineering was planning a dejarik tournament," Pol says.

Veska's eyes light up. "When?"

"Possibly tonight? Thought you might be interested."

"_Yes._"

The conversation turns to Veska's former life as a schoolyard dejarik champion back on Bothawui. And thence to the relative merits of dejarik versus pazaak, which Sen absolutely loathes.

"You bet money on simple arithmetic," she says with a sneer. "It's _pointless._"

"Heathen," says Pol. "It takes skill, it does, and a good head for numbers."

"Dejarik at least makes a pretense of requiring strategy. Pazaak is—"

"Oi, pazaak _is_ bloody strategic! Ever see a card shark in action? Thing of beauty."

"Boring," says Veska.

"You have no soul," Pol states. "Either of you. Augh. I need a drink."

**o.O.o**

Bastila knocks on Chena's door. The Guardian's grief flows sluggish and thick in the Force, a river blocked by debris after a storm. She knows the feeling, all too well. She also knows that allowing it to consume oneself is dangerous.

There's no answer. Maybe Chena didn't hear—Bastila knocks again, louder.

The door slides open. Chena stares at her hollowly from within, her cheeks dry but her eyes bloodshot. "Can I help you?" she says.

"May I come in?"

She takes a step back in answer; Bastila enters, glancing around the room in curiosity. Impersonal, as most Jedi quarters are, but here and there she can see signs of personality. A holo of Iylos and a gaggle of younglings, among them a dark-haired girl who might very well be Chena herself. A green ceramic mug painted with yellow letters spelling out _Thank You Jedis From Tasi And Ben_. A stack of holonovels on the desktop. All small, portable, and modest.

"What do you want?" Chena asks.

"Just to talk," says Bastila. "I'm worried about you."

"Don't be. I'm fine."

"You're obviously not. I can sense your distress."

"What are you going to do, Battle Meditate at me until it all goes away?"

Bastila huffs. "No. This is something you must come to terms with on your own. It will be painful, but . . . it's necessary."

"Don't you dare tell me how to grieve," Chena says coldly.

"I know how you're feeling," Bastila says. "Please, let me help you—just talk to me—"

"Get out."

"I lost my Master, too, I know that it feels as if—"

Chena snarls, "You don't know anything, Shan. Centares was your first ground battle, yeah? Well, it was nothing new for us. We've been fighting this war since Revan and Malak first crawled out of the black. _You_ have been sitting around _meditating_ while good people fight and die in the dirt to protect_ your_ precious ass—"

"And I feel every one of their deaths!" Bastila shouts. "Do you think I'm unaware of the suffering this war has caused? I may not experience it directly, but I can't escape it any more than you can!"

Chena laughs wildly, brokenly, pointing at the hologram on the bedside table. "See them? You failed them. All of them. Every single one of those Jedi, those children, is dead or worse thanks to this _fucking_ war—except for me! Picked off by hunters. Killed in battle. Captured and tortured and turned to the Dark Side so that _we_ had to kill them! You call yourself the Hope of the Republic? _Fuck you._"

Bastila stares at her, aghast. "I—"

"Out," Chena says. "Right now."

Bastila stumbles out of the room, hands shaking. She presses them to her face. What did she do wrong? What did she say? She offered her sympathy, her compassion, and Chena—

She's drowning.

**o.O.o**

"Y're m'fav'rite," Pol slurs, beaming at her with drunken benevolence. "Y're th' _best._"

"You're not so bad yourself," Sen says dryly. She slides the tumbler of liquor away from him, and his face falls like an empire.

"Wazznt done wi' that," he mumbles.

"Yes, you are."

"Y're _eeevil_," Pol informs her, and he wanders away to join the shouting, cheering crowd around one of the mess tables. Someone ran up to their quarters to get a dejarik board, with actual, physical pieces for each player. Veska is systematically destroying every contender, aided in no small part by the amount of alcohol consumed by most of them before they work up the courage to challenge her.

Sen leans back against her own table, sipping her drink, in a quieter zone away from the action. She watches with a faint half-smile as credits are exchanged and bets are taken. Force help her, she likes them. Ordinary people, not a single Force-sensitive among them, concerned more with their own small lives than with the fate of the galaxy . . . She feels _safe_ with them.

It's an illusory safety, she knows, as they live under constant threat of Sith attack and one or more of them is spying on her for the Jedi Council, but at least none of them are going to actively try to kill her.

"Wow, and here I thought I was the only person here who wasn't shitfaced," a voice comments from behind her.

She turns—she vaguely recognizes him, an intensely befreckled human in his mid-thirties with a shock of orange hair. A mess hall worker, friendly with everyone unless they spill condiments on a recently-cleared table. "Liver of durasteel," she says, waggling the half-empty shot glass in her left hand. "Only not really."

The man laughs. "I can see that. You're in crypto, right?"

"Yeah, the nerd herd. I'm Sen."

"Julnar Kess," the man says. "I, uh, I give people food."

"Good to meet you properly," she says, swirling the drink around absently. The best that can be said of this particular brew is that it's alcoholic. Very alcoholic. Taste is secondary to delivering a swift punch to the fine motor skills and judgement centers of the brain. Or stripping paint; it's a bit ambiguous. She'll have to ask Aleesa if it's one of her concoctions. Sen puts the glass down. "So how long have you been on the _Monument_?" she asks.

"Couple months. Been working for the Republic for the past six, seven years. Used to be a soldier, actually."

"Why the career change, then?"

Julnar gives a twisted smile and presses the heel of one hand into his thigh. "Took a blaster bolt to the leg on Faiue, right before the end of the Mandalorian Wars. Jedi kept me and my squad alive until the medics got there, but kolto can only do so much."

". . . I'm sorry," she says, biting back further questions.

"What about you?" Julnar asks breezily. "What brings you aboard this venerable lady?"

Sen snorts, calling up memories of days that never happened. "A really shitty choice of cargo and a really lucky Republic gunner. Next thing you know I'm being hauled up in front of a military court with a choice between prison or five years' service. I'm a spacer—I'd lose my mind dirtside. Figured working on a cruiser'd be the best way to keep flying."

"How the mighty have fallen," Julnar says. He produces a bottle of the questionably-sourced drink and pours himself a shot, then tops off Sen's. Raising his, he says, "To career changes and crap liquor."

"_K'oyacyi,_" she says without thinking, tipping hers in Julnar's general direction.

He frowns. "That's Mandalorian, right?"

"They knew how to throw a party," Sen drawls, and gulps down the vile substance as quickly as possible. She coughs, eyes watering, but manages not to choke. Uncertain provenance and a kick like tickled krayt dragon? Paint stripper. It's all too plausible.

Shrugging, Julnar copies her. He taps the rim of his glass and looks at her sidelong. "Is it strange, working here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you were a self-employed mover of sensitive cargo, right?" he says teasingly. "And now you're a codebreaker. That's gotta be quite a shift."

"Not that different. It's still all about outsmarting everyone." Her ears are burning—the alcohol's hitting her bloodstream.

"Ha—point." He refills their glasses, gazes fixedly into his. "Look, I—I dunno how to say this without being all creepy, but . . . I notice people. With my job, it's not that easy to actually talk to them—I'm invisible, y'know, 'cause I'm cleaning their tables or whatever. But I've seen you around, and talking to you now, you seem like a really nice person, and, well, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to do this again sometime?"

Sen stares at him. "This," she repeats. "Meaning . . . chat?"

"Yeah . . .?"

"Are you flirting with me?" she asks bluntly.

"No!" Julnar says, recoiling. "_Hell_, no, no flirting, that's not what I—not that you're not attractive, just—dammit. Sorry. What I mean is that I'd like to get to know you better."

"So you're proposing . . . what, probationary friendship?"

"Just probationary, huh?"

She nods, exasperated. "I don't know you," she enunciates. "So yeah, probationary. Sometimes these things just don't work out."

"Aw, isn't that kinda defeatist?"

She stands up, setting her glass down with a final _clack_. "Don't push it," she says. "I'm gonna go watch Veska kick everybody's asses."

**o.O.o**

It's nearly five days from Centares to Serenno. Five days aboard a cramped cargo freighter with no one but Carth Onasi and Chena Oslar for company.

Onasi tries to fill the oppressive silence—for an hour or two, at least. He chatters about their ship's enhancements, about hyperspace physics, about a distant cousin of his who used to be a steward in one of the Great Houses. Then his material runs out, and he trails off in resignation to the inevitable.

Chena spends most of her time either staring into the swirling blue void or locked into her cabin. Bastila wanders around the ship, restless, after those first few awkward hours in the cockpit, returning every so often to check in on Onasi, who seems to regard her visits as funny.

"Look, clearly I'm not the one you want to be talking to," he says the fourth time she drifts into the cockpit.

"She will not listen," Bastila says.

Onasi tilts his head. "Oh, yeah? Will you?"

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean sometimes you've got to let people deal with their crap in their own way. Their own time."

"We are Jedi," Bastila says stiffly, "and we are at war. We don't have the luxury of time, or the excuse of lack of discipline."

". . . I can see why she's so excited to have this conversation with you," says Onasi, rolling his eyes.

Bastila sniffs and returns to her own cabin. Onasi cannot possibly understand. A Jedi does not allow their emotions to rule them. A Jedi does not wallow in self-pity. A Jedi sets these aside and acts with a clear mind.

And yes, it is difficult. She struggles to control herself every day. To let go of her fears and anxieties. But she managed to stay afloat after the attack on the _Crusader_, she managed to keep herself more or less stable with her Master dead and an unwanted Force bond connecting her to the Sith who killed him—Zhar trusted her enough to leave her with the Fleet, even after all of that.

Still, she does experience doubt. So much of the Jedi way sounds like wishful thinking in the face of this war. Chena's reactions attest to that. In the heat of the moment, it's all too easy to dismiss the Code as meaningless or trite.

Which is what makes it all the more important that they both hold to it.

**o.O.o**

"That's it, stay centered, don't get distracted by the zella nut gallery—"

"You told us to be distracting!"

"Exactly, so keep it up, all of you."

". . . Trask Ulgo is a snarveling plobbersmick!"

"What does that even _mean?_"

Sen grins and dances back from Trask's strike, unarmed but unworried. She had been, initially, as the combination of a slight hangover from last night and Trask's squad as witnesses to her training was not very appealing. But Evi and Olen didn't seem to care that when last they met she was embarrassingly incompetent as a swordswoman; evidently, Trask told them about their sessions. They were quite happy to provide running commentary as a test of focus.

"Okay—now," Trask says.

He stabs forward. She sidesteps, catches his sword hand, pivots until they're nearly shoulder to shoulder, and keeps turning. She controls his momentum, uses it to pull him into a spin, overbalanced—a smooth arm movement, a quick adjustment of grip, and Trask's back slams into the mat, his sword in her hand angled towards his throat.

"Nice," he says, rolling onto his feet. "That was great. Solid stance, good finish. Now let's actually fence. Evi?"

The soldier tosses him another practice sword, which he flourishes. "Showoff," Evi says with a fond shake of her head.

"I'm loosening my wrist," Trask says primly.

Olen snorts. "Uh-_huh. _You just think that looks cool."

Trask and Sen circle each other, eyes locked. Then Trask attacks, a sudden jab to the torso that she blocks easily; she retaliates, and they quickly settle into the rhythm of strike and counterstrike. Trask fights using the standard Republic melee style, an economical and powerful form; Sen slithers away from his blows, never quite engaging, never pitting her strength against his but using his momentum to feed her own.

It is nothing like the modified Juyo she's been using for nearly ten years. But it works, and it doesn't require the Force.

Then Evi jumps in to attack her flank. Sen deflects before she quite registers what's happening. "Thought the zella nut gallery wasn't part of the action," she says, skipping backwards a few steps.

Trask charges. "Who said we were fighting fair?" he shouts, bringing his sword down in a devastating blow that, if backed by a real vibroblade, could probably slice her clean in half lengthwise.

Sen twists aside and pivots again, gets behind him, kicks him square in the small of the back. Not quite what he's been teaching her, but it does send him down to the mat again, leaving her with only Evi to deal with.

And Olen, now. Well, then.

The next minutes are a blur of weaving and ducking and trying to control the flow of combat through redirection rather than raw power. She stays in constant motion, never allowing more than one or two of her attackers to come at her at any one time, positioning them so that they block each other's advances as they fall and spring back to their feet. The object of this exercise isn't to strike a finishing blow—it's to remain standing as long as possible.

It grates against every instinct she's honed over the course of a thousand battles, against Mandalorians or against Jedi and Republic troops. Kill the enemy before they kill you. Don't let them get up again. There are no points for mercy or kindness or honor.

And yet . . . there's a kind of balance, here. Against overwhelming odds, it's better to stay alive and escape than die in some dramatic last stand to no good purpose. And while three against one has, until quite recently, never been overwhelming odds, it certainly feels that way now.

They score several hits—killing blows, mostly. The exercise continues. Every time she misses a parry or stumbles into a strike, she bites back a curse and returns to guard position, ready to try again. And again. And again.

Sen keeps fighting until exhaustion, dehydration, and a shoulder that seems to be full of molten lead force her to call a halt. By then, even Olen is sweating. He salutes her with his sword, winking. "Doing good, crypto," he says.

"Thanks—grunt," she pants, tottering over to a stack of crates with their personal effects laid on top. She sets the practice sword down and gulps half a liter of water while Olen mops off his forehead and Evi chugs some kind of energy drink. Trask's face is blotched red, but he's grinning.

"I gotta say, I did not expect you to pick this up so fast," he says.

"Neither—did I."

They settle on a date for the next lesson—Evi and Olen volunteer to join in, and Sen nods so fast that her head starts aching again. "That was—really helpful," she says. She glances at Trask. "If they fit in with your plans."

"Sure," he says. "See you around, then."

"Thanks. All of you—thank you."

Sen collects her gear—she stuffs her discarded jacket back into her bag, far too overheated and sweaty to wear it—and sets off for the crew quarters, bag over one shoulder, practice sword over the other. The recycled shipboard air is cold against the clammy skin of her arms. She quickens her stride, eager to reach a 'fresher.

The lights flicker. She steps forward and _bounces_—floats at least a foot in the air before being yanked back down.

Sen lands hard, absorbs the impact with her knees, grimaces at the extra weight from her belongings. "What in the . . ."

"Ah, kriff," a passing Mon Cal crewman says.

"Did we just lose gravity?" she says, uneasy.

"Yeah, that's twice in the past month. We're flying on a fifty-year-old scrap heap, so it's no wonder things are starting to fall apart."

Sen walks very carefully the rest of the way to her quarters.

Aleesa is asleep; Sen has to tiptoe to avoid waking her, and juggling her gear while expecting to be propelled towards the ceiling at any moment does not make it any easier. The shower is likewise nerve-wracking. Water, hard tiles, and fluctuating gravity tend not to mix well.

But gravity remains steady, and, once dried and dressed again, Sen goes to sleep.

**o.O.o**

_tbc_


	7. Perturbation

**A/N:** *crawls out from under a rock* Erm. Forgive me, friends, for I have wronged you greatly. It has been three months since the last update. And that is mostly my fault. Would've been one month, only there were finals (not my fault). Would've been two, only I got lazy (totally my fault).

And then I spilled tea all over my laptop (also my fault). The laptop died. _It wasn't even good tea, dammit._

But I am still alive and writing again, and not a byte of story was lost in the Calami-Tea of 2013, because backups are the absolute best. So here's a PSA: Back _everything_ up. Especially if you write. I could have lost hundreds of thousands of words—some fandom-related, some my own stuff—in a single stupid instant if I did not have a backup drive. _Back. It. All. Up._

Again, my deepest apologies for the long wait. I'm hoping for a weekly update schedule, but it may be more or less depending on what life throws at me. However. _I will finish this story._

Grazie mille to everyone who's faved, followed, read, and reviewed! And special thanks to Mithostwen and Squirre1Dragon, for being awesome and reminding me to get back on this thing. Enjoy.

**Part 7: Perturbation**

_In which everyone is an emotional mess._

**o.O.o**

They're three days away from Serenno when Bastila makes her next attempt to reach Chena. She catches the Guardian in the empty cargo hold, where she has taken up saber practice, running through katas with an alarmingly blank expression.

"Do you mind if I join you?" Bastila asks.

Chena stops mid-motion, deactivating her lightsaber. "Yes, I do mind," she says.

"Your attitude is not helping anyone, least of all yourself."

"_My_ attitude? I just want you to leave me alone!"

"For how long?" Bastila says. "We must be able to work together once we reach Serenno. Every day you spend in this state is another day wasted—"

"We'd work together just fine if you'd just—stop. Give me some time, okay, that'd _help_ a lot more than what you've been doing!"

"All I'm asking is for you to open up a bit—"

"And all I'm asking is for you to leave me alone! Unless you're just too emotionally tone-deaf to know when to back off."

Emotionally tone-deaf? Ridiculous. She is well aware of Chena's grief. She's trying to help. Why can't she see that?

Chena is watching her, frustration stirring the mire of the Force around her. "Bastila, just go."

"Not until we determine how to get your emotions under control. You are a Jedi, Chena. You're better than this."

There is a moment of calm, of quiet. Then Chena surges into motion, lightsaber blazing. Bastila instinctively activates hers and blocks the attack, smashes it to the side, sweeps the other blade low to force Chena back. "What are you doing?" she cries out.

"You asked to join in," Chena says. "So _fight me_ already!"

Bastila remains on the defensive, appalled by the hopeless rage sleeting from the Guardian. Fueled by that rage, she fights as if she has every intention of maiming or killing her. Chena drives her out of the cargo hold, into the central room of the freighter. Bastila winces as their lightsabers leave scorch marks and sparking wires along the bulkheads.

"Just—leave—me—_alone!_" Chena howls.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

Bastila jumps. Lieutenant Onasi stands silhouetted by the cockpit's hyperspace-blue glow, hands on his hips, glaring between the two of them like a Master pushed to the breaking point. "Well?" he says.

Breathing hard, Chena lowers her lightsaber. She looks at Bastila, horror dawning in her eyes. "I—Bastila, I didn't . . ."

Onasi stalks forward. "No, I bet you didn't," he says, heedless of the humming blades at their sides. "So both of you—_stand down._ Take a damn breather and—and try not to blow out any of the exterior walls, for kriff's sake, or we're all sucking vacuum. Quarters. _Now._"

Shame-faced, Chena obeys, deactivating her saber and practically fleeing the hold. Bastila remains, spine stiff and straight, thumb wavering over the ignition button.

"That goes for you, too," Onasi barks.

"I was trying to help," she says.

"Yeah? Well, great job."

"What would you have me do? Let her drown in self-pity?"

Onasi gapes at her. "Kriffing—_no._ Let her get her head on straight. Stop pushing."

"If she does not address—"

"Padawan Shan, I might not be a Jedi, but I like to think I know a thing or two about mourning," he snaps out. "Leave her be."

Bastila shuts off her lightsaber and stalks into her quarters, shame and frustration roiling around her in a toxic, clammy fog.

**o.O.o**

That morning, Sen wakes up to a new alert from her tracking programs.

Another hit—2232 last night, sent from a terminal just a few decks above. No other transmissions sent from any anonymous account during the 2200-2300 time frame. And courtesy of the _Monument-II_'s diligent droid maintenance crew, she has eyes on that terminal.

The image on her datapad screen is grainy and blue-tinged, but clear enough through the sensors of a scrubber droid.

Sen falls back against her pillow, sneering. "Of course," she mutters.

Julnar limps off-screen from hours ago, his duty done.

"The hell are you doing?" Aleesa grumbles, stomping into their room and kicking her shoes into the corner by her bed.

"Catching up," Sen says. She deactivates the datapad and sits up again.

"Thought you had yesterday off. Lucky bitch."

She shakes off the desire to retaliate. _Redirect._ "I did," she says slowly. "I also heard that you once brewed illegal moonshine in a storage closet for use over shore leave."

Aleesa freezes. "Who told you."

"Colleague. I find this . . . an admirable show of initiative."

"That's not even a little condescending."

"I'm an _arrogant_ bitch," Sen says loftily.

Aleesa snorts, toeing off her socks and falling onto her bed backwards. "Can't argue with that," she says.

Oh, what the hell. If this keeps up they might actually become non-hostile, which will make Sen's mornings much more pleasant. "You have very nice eyebrows."

". . . Thanks?"

"I'm going to go to work now," Sen chirps, bouncing to her feet.

"You do that," says Aleesa, eyeing her in bemusement.

Down in Communications, Pol looks pitiful while Veska gives off an air of superiority in her life choices.

"Looks like someone had an interesting night," says Sen.

"Ach, keep your voice down," he says, hunching over his station and wincing at every noise. There's a cup of caf at his elbow. Perilously close to his elbow, in point of fact.

Sen scoots it out of harm's way and sits down. "You know that stuff's a diuretic," she says.

"'S a what?"

"Makes you piss," says Veska. "Hangover feels worse when you're dehydrated."

Pol's forehead thunks onto his workstation. "And you only saw fit to mention this now?"

Veska pats him on the back, consolingly. "Didn't know human biology was that stupid."

Pol lifts his head and glares at the caf as if it's betrayed him. "Shit," he enunciates.

Sen snickers quietly, logs in, and gets to work on the latest crop of Sith transmissions. Not to her usual standard, though. A great deal of her focus is on the question of _now what_? She knows that Julnar Kess is her watcher. She knows how and when he's sending his messages to his handlers. And given the fact that he approached her last night and made contact, it stands to reason that he's trying to worm his way into her confidences. Evidently the Jedi want him to keep a closer eye on her. A few hours per day of indirect and fleeting contact isn't enough to give a comprehensive idea of what's going on in her head.

But actual conversations, trust, maybe even friendship? Awkward as Julnar's overture was, she might have considered talking with him if she hadn't discovered his side job.

. . . She'll probably have to, anyway. Stave off suspicion. And she can't exactly get rid of Julnar now—well, she could, but then she'd have to find his replacement watcher, and that would just be . . . inconvenient.

She could try to crack his encrypted messages. Intercept and alter them if necessary—if he catches on that she's well aware of who and what she was.

_Is,_ part of her says stubbornly. Except for the bit where her memory of what that entailed is full of more holes than a noodle strainer.

Sen puts that little existential crisis on hold. She'll see how _friendly_ Julnar wants to get, and deal with him accordingly. Best-case, he doesn't realize she remembers anything, she doesn't have to interfere with his reports, and she can focus on finding a way out of this mess.

**o.O.o**

Serenno is a dusk-blue gem of a world, some quirk of its atmospheric composition rendering the sky a soft slate color. From space, the equatorial region's band of clouds looks like white filigree, swirling and spiraling in elegant streams. The Serennian defense fleet floats high above the surface in watchful silence. A beautiful planet, calm and peaceful, its night side speckled with pale lights from scattered urban centers.

Beyond the night side, beyond the orbits of the outer planets of the system, the stars glint coldly against the black. There are too many, though. Far too many. Sith ships gather at the fringes of the system, guaranteeing violent retribution should the Serennians refuse their offer of "protection."

Bastila and Chena have been avoiding each other since their altercation. They're only reconvening in the cockpit now that they've arrived. Onasi has studiously ignored the tension strangling their ship, instead focusing on maintenance and navigation. As the transport glides into range, he opens a channel. "Serenno Command, this is Republic shuttle _Kassidon_ requesting permission to—"

"_Kassidon_, you are cleared to dock with Serennan Orbital Command Ship _Patrician_," the comms officer cuts in. "Please make your way to these coordinates with all haste."

"Is there a problem?" Bastila asks over Onasi's shoulder as the capital ship's location appears on the nav readout. Peaceful Serenno might appear, but even from thousands of klicks away she can sense the edges of the defenders' anxiety.

"The Sith are on an approach vector," the officer says grimly. "It would seem that you have arrived just in time, ma'am."

"Acknowledged, Command," says Onasi. "_Kassidon_ out." He alters course, shaking his head. "Here we go again . . ."

The _Patrician_ is beautiful, as warships go, all smooth curving lines and bright steel-blue hull, its sublight engines glowing pale red. Onasi takes them into its aft hangar bay and sets them down gently before twisting around to look at Bastila and Chena. "Want me with you two for the briefing, ma'am?" he asks.

"That would be best, I think," says Bastila. Try as she might to attribute her answer to some clever plan, the truth is that she knows him and trusts him far more than the Serennans. As Onasi unbuckles himself from the pilot's seat and cracks the vertebrae in his neck, she strides towards the rear of the transport and lowers the ramp. Chena trails after her, silent and stony-faced.

The three of them descend, and Bastila takes a moment to look around the hangar. There's a wing of starfighters off to the left, canopies raised, surrounded by a swarm of mechanics and maintenance droids as they're refueled, checked, and re-checked. The pilots are streaming into the hangar in ones and twos, pulling on their helmets as they go. They may not fly for the Republic yet, but there's little difference between the _Patrician_'s crew complement and that of the _Tempest_.

"This way," an aide says, guiding the Jedi and pilot deeper into the ship. They wind through the corridors and enter the turbolift leading up to the bridge—a pleasantly open space with sunken crew stations along the sweeping walls and a captain's chair front and center. Before it is a low wide holoprojector currently displaying the entire Serenno system, planets and asteroids in blue, friendly ships in green, and the Sith in red.

The chair's occupant, a tall human with close-shorn grey hair, stands and salutes. Her Force presence is steady, unflappable. Perhaps even indifferent. "I am Captain Edrin Simm," she says. "Thank you for your prompt response to my planet's call for aid, Master Jedi."

"She's a Padawan, actually," Chena says. Bastila sighs inwardly. _Not the time._

"Ah," says Simm, raising an eyebrow at her before turning to Bastila. "I apologize, Padawan Shan. But in any case, your aid is appreciated."

"What's the situation, then?" asks Bastila.

"The Sith left hyperspace approximately 1.2 billion klicks out from the planet. They're approaching swiftly just above the orbital plane," she says, indicating the hologram.

Bastila peers at the image, trying to calculate distances and velocities. "How long until they arrive?"

"Three hours."

She waits, but Simm doesn't elaborate. Bastila frowns and prompts, "What exactly do you want me to do, here?"

Simm smiles, showing teeth. Bitter _triumph_ echoes through the Force, and the captain says, "You're already doing it."

The bottom drops out of Bastila's stomach as security officers move to surround her, Onasi, and Chena, blasters drawn.

**o.O.o**

The first shift cryptographers are just entering the mess hall on lunch break when all the baseboard lights go red and an alarm begins to blare.

"_Warning. Internal temperature above critical,_" a smooth, computerized voice informs them. "_Warning. Internal temperature above critical._"

"The hell?" Pol says, looking around. "Feels just fine . . ."

"_Emergency cooldown initiated._"

The air vents belch thick white clouds. They pour down the walls, pooling on the floor—Sen sidles back as tendrils ooze towards her boots. "Please tell me this isn't engine coolant," she says, raising a wrist to her face and pressing the fabric of her jacket over mouth and nose.

"Water ice," an off-duty tech says, kicking at the cloud with a snort. "Dammit, I _told_ Wolan the temp monitors were faulty!"

"What do you mean, _faulty_?" Pol shrills.

The tech rolls his eyes. "I mean the damn things are older than dirt and need replacement yesterday. Automated controls must've turned on when the internal temp registered above three-fifteen."

". . . We'd be broiling if it was that hot," says Sen.

"Yeah, well, I told you they need replacement." The tech stalks off, calling over his shoulder, "I'm going down to Maintenance to raise hell."

Veska's fur has puffed out, making her a bit fuzzier-looking than usual. Pol is dancing from foot to foot and rubbing his arms. Sen stuffs her hands into her jacket pockets and blows out a breath that rises like mist off a lake in winter.

"Anyone for a snowball fight?" Pol says hopefully.

"_Attention all crew,_" the _Monument_'s captain says over the intercom. "_There has been a malfunction in the ship's temperature regulation systems—_" ("Surely not," mutters Veska.) "—_but repairs are underway. Return to your duties unless otherwise notified._"

"Useless," Veska says.

"No, seriously, we could start a snowball fight—"

"With what?" the Bothan demands.

Pol shrugs. "I dunno, frozen protein goo?"

Julnar Kess shakes his head at him from behind the serving counters. "It's a hell of a lot denser than water. You could hurt someone."

"That does not inspire confidence in the goo's suitability for consumption," Pol says.

Sen snorts. Julnar glances at her, then cracks a smile. Of course. He wants to ingratiate himself into her immediate circle. "Yeah, I'm with you there."

"Eh, it's not as though I can cook much better. How's about we get something to eat before it all freezes solid?" says Pol, taking up a tray.

They manage to eat quickly enough that there are only a few frost crystals on the surface of their food, but five minutes later the vents are still gushing ice-cold air and the mess hall floor is decidedly slippery. Trask and Olen are over at the far end of the room and seem to be testing the traction of their shoes. With nearly half an hour left for the shift's lunch break, there's little else to do but join them.

Pol doesn't get his protein goo-ball fight, but a series of duels with dinnerware does ensue. Anything to stay in motion, and therefore, warm. Sen proves adept at using the slippery floor to her advantage, skidding around her opponents and sliding under tables to avoid blows. She's taken out by a tray thrown by Trask, who in turn falls to a Sullustan engineer.

The temperature drops steadily as the lunch break continues. Eliminated competitors congregate near the open ovens in the kitchen, at Julnar's invitation. Sen finds herself wedged between a Falleen and Veska. She looks sideways at the bleary-eyed Falleen, then at the crewmen in front of them. "Move a little, guys," she says, tapping them on the shoulders. "Cold-blooded crew take priority."

"Yeah, yeah. No groping," says one of them, wrinkling his nose at the Falleen.

"I don't know what you mean," he says stiffly.

"Keep the sex pheromones to yourself."

The Falleen's scales flush red. "Excuse me?"

The human sneers at him. "It's what you scalies do, right? Give people a big faceful of chemicals and let 'em drool over you to your lizard heart's content—"

"Racists to the back," Veska growls, tugging him out. The man soon finds himself staring at a wall of shoulders. Cold ones. He curses, but huddles in the last row as the rest of the crew ignore him.

The Falleen folds his arms and shuffles forward, shoulders nearly at his ears. "You didn't have to do that," he says, voice pitched low.

"This is a Republic ship," says Veska. "We don't put up with that kind of shit."

_You're alienating over half the galaxy!_ someone shouts. Sen twitches. No—a memory. They were angry with her . . . She remembers they wore a uniform, black and red. Green eyes. _This is absurd, my lord. Leave aside the moral considerations if you must, but look at the raw numbers!_

She stops breathing. She remembers clenching her hand into a fist and watching the light leave those eyes.

**o.O.o**

A trap. Of course it's a trap. The Serennans know the Republic wants their backing—their money, to fund the war. They know they're valuable enough to warrant Bastila's attention, and they're in good enough standing with the Republic for Bastila to come essentially alone. But if the Sith had a better offer . . .

The holoprojector still shows the Sith approaching, an entire flotilla of warships.

Bastila's eyes narrow. "You're being threatened," she guesses, ignoring the security officers as Onasi swears quietly. "They want you to turn me over or watch your planet be destroyed."

Simm shakes her head, clasping her hands behind her back. "Not quite, Padawan Shan," she says. "Or rather, you know only half the story." Her smile widens. "We have managed to keep the Sith from taking the system for several weeks. But never have we faced so many at once. Our defenses are strong, but they will not hold against a full-scale invasion force—which, as you can see, will arrive shortly. I would like to propose a deal, then, on behalf of the Great Houses of Serenno."

Bastila looks her in the eye. "What kind of deal?"

"You will utilize your Battle Meditation to aid our forces against the Sith. If we succeed in repelling them, you may go free. If not, you will be the price of Serenno's safety. I believe Darth Malak has expressed an interest in capturing you alive."

"Could've just asked," Chena says under her breath.

"Jedi are devious," says Simm. "You pledge to protect the galaxy, and yet only your renegades dare to do what is necessary."

Bastila scowls. "You mean Revan and Malak."

"Merely an observation." Simm shrugs. "Obviously Malak is no longer quite as benign."

"There are Jedi on the ground right now," Chena says tightly. "There are Jedi _dying_ out there! How dare you—"

"Malak will not hold to any bargain you make with him," says Bastila, before Chena can build up a head of steam. Or explode. "He is cunning and deceitful, and he has no compunction about breaking promises. Serenno is in danger whether you give me to the Sith or not."

"But in markedly less danger than it would be if we were to resist the Sith without you," says Simm.

"Why didn't you request more ships?" asks Carth. "The Republic would've sent them." He sounds . . . resigned, but not surprised. Disappointed.

Simm spreads her hands. "The Great Houses felt that if Padawan Shan is as effective as she is rumored to be, they would be unnecessary. And if not, there would be no loose ends attempting to thwart the exchange. So. In the interest of your own freedom and survival, you'd best see to it that Serenno does not fall."

**o.O.o**

"Why is this bucket still flying?" Pol stabs at his workstation, shivering as the techs bring the _Monument_'s interior up to more reasonable temperatures, albeit slowly.

"Budgeting issues," says Sen. "It's expensive to commission and outfit a whole new cruiser."

"The Sith seem to manage just fine! And they don't even make you pay taxes."

"They also don't do much public infrastructure maintenance," Iden puts in on his way past their stations, about half a dozen datapads under one arm. "They leave that to their puppet governments, which _do_ collect taxes, so keep your complaints to yourself, Mr. Fintan."

"So where do all the bloody ships come from?"

"Greatest enigma of the war," says Veska. "Shut up and work."

"Of course—until we lose oxygen, or gravity, or the computer decides to cook us!"

Iden gives a four-toned sigh. "The captain's aware of the problem, and has contacted Admiral Duncan. Chances are the _Monument_ will either be decommissioned or renovated."

Pol stares at the Ithorian. "Decommissioned? What'll happen to the crew?"

"That's up to the brass," says Iden. "And now I really need to take these to Lieutenant Pinak, so if you'll excuse me . . ."

Pol falls silent, looking blankly at his monitor without focusing on it. Sen leans over and snaps in front of his nose. "Hey," she says. "You okay?"

He turns to her. "I like this ship," he says mournfully. "And dammit, I like the people on it. Well, mostly. I mean—what happens if we're all split up by Command?"

"You'll survive," says Veska.

Pol throws up his hands. "That I might, but I'll bloody well miss you, appalling sense of humor and all."

"Nothing's final. Might not be split," Veska says calmly. "And worrying won't change anything."

He goes quiet, then, but he seems distracted still.

Sen tries to imagine the two of them apart. It's . . . difficult. All bickering aside, they're always together. Inseparable. Doubtless they'd be fine—they both seem like adaptable people—but Pol without Veska, or Veska without Pol, would be incomplete.

More frighteningly, _Sen_ without Veska and Pol would be . . . less.

_Hells._

She's gotten comfortable here, in this life. She has friends. Colleagues. A boss. Friendly acquaintances. Unfriendly ones she doesn't feel the need to murder in cold blood. She has gone native.

Frack, she would miss these people if she lost them.

_My name is Revan._

_Not. Sen._

She digs her nails into the palms of her hands. This shouldn't be happening. She—she doesn't _do_ this, she doesn't have friends and coworkers and a mundane job and dejarik nights in the canteen—_my name is Revan and this is NOT my life_—

She _likes_ this life. And yet she can't even tell if that's her true opinion—Sen is the mask but she is comfortable and safe and ordinary and—and she could stay. She could stay here, pretend she was never a Sith Lord, pretend she never commanded armies or destroyed worlds. She could be Sen, and crack jokes with Veska and Pol, spar with Trask, establish a truce with Aleesa, work to speed the end of the war in some small way . . .

She sighs, shoulders slumping. _When the war is over_. They used to keep lists of their plans—fantasies, really—of what they'd do after the Mandalorians were defeated. Malak kept saying he wanted to leave the Jedi entirely. Go to some war-ravaged planet and help pick up the pieces. Walk in the ash. Watch it come alive again.

Revan never told the same story twice. She never had reason to—anything would be possible, when the war was over.

Then _her_ war began.

She doesn't know what happened. She doesn't know why she took her fleet into the Unknown Regions and returned bent on conquest of the Republic she'd spent years trying to save. All she knows is that by the time her memories pick up again, she believed with every fiber of her being that the Republic had to fall.

_**Why?**_

. . . And that is why she cannot stay. She will never find out from here. Not as Sen.

_My name is Revan._

**o.O.o**

Chena and Onasi are both more than willing to fight their way off the _Patrician._ "They betrayed us once," the lieutenant says, mere centimeters from drawing his blaster. "There's no guarantee they won't do it again."

Bastila looks at Captain Simm. The woman is simply watching and waiting, a hard edge to her gaze promising retaliation if any of them make the first move. "The welfare of Serenno is all that matters," Simm says.

"Yeah, and the rest of the galaxy can rot for all you care," says Onasi.

"If it were your planet, would you not do anything to ensure its safety?"

All the blood drains from Onasi's face. "You—"

"That's enough," Bastila says quickly. "We have little choice in this matter, Lieutenant." To Simm, she says, "I will do my best for your planet. And I will hold you to your word. But know this—at the first hint of treachery, we _will_ demonstrate why you do not renege on a deal with Jedi."

Chena, with a fortunate sense of the dramatic, folds her arms with a nasty little smirk. "I suggest you don't," she says.

Simm considers them. She gestures, and the security officers seize Onasi and Chena and divest them of their weapons, fastening their wrists together with binders. "A precaution only, you understand," she says, addressing Bastila. "Now, let us begin."

With her only two allies held at gunpoint at her back, Bastila swallows and steps forward to the holoprojector. "I need to know how your forces are distributed to be most effective," she says.

"Very well." And Simm takes her through Serenno's defenses—the early-warning systems monitoring hyperspace traffic to and from the system, the outposts stationed within the mid-orbit asteroid belt, the ground cannons, the small but disciplined fleet remaining in the planet's gravity well.

"Do you hope to keep them from breaching the asteroid belt?" asks Bastila.

Simm shakes her head and points to the empty space between Serenno's orbit and the asteroids. "Not at all. We let the Sith pass through the belt. Then our outposts ambush them from behind. We drive them towards the planet, where they will meet with heavy resistance, and between the two forces, they will be crushed."

"Then what the hell do you need her for?" says Onasi, tugging a bit on his restraints.

"Insurance, Lieutenant," Simm says. She looks at Bastila. "The blood of every Serennan who dies today is on your hands."

Ignoring that pronouncement—and how it resonates with her own growing sense of guilt—Bastila focuses on the battle plan. "I have limited range with Battle Meditation," she says. "I can't affect people outside a certain radius. If the _Patrician_ remains here I will not be able to help the outposts—"

"The homeworld is far more important. Serenno must not fall."

". . . Very well."

**o.O.o**

The first Sith cruisers slip past the asteroid belt, sublight engines at full power. Serenno is a blue-white crescent in the distance. The ship's gun crews and fighter complement stand ready to begin the assault, weapons charged and loaded, targeting systems lighting up as the planet's defenses appear on long-range scanners.

Captain Tova Morlissen of the _Endless_ grips the bridge railing in white-knuckled fists as they begin their approach. This is his last chance. His failure at Ersanne has placed him in the unenviable position of Darth Malak's displeasure—and the Dark Lord was more than clear regarding the consequences of another disappointment.

Thus, this assignment. Serenno—not a strategic necessity, but certainly a valuable asset. Not renowned for its naval power, but respected nonetheless. Morlissen counts himself fortunate. He could have been sent to the ongoing Perlemian conflict, where any mistake, no matter how innocuous, might very well lose the Sith the battle for one of the galaxy's most important trade routes. After Centares' loss, there has been little progress in reestablishing control.

Morlissen sometimes feels that he has been over-promoted. He was quite happy as his predecessor's XO—an administrative position, and a difficult one at that, but he was _good_ at logistics, at the minutiae and details that ensure the smooth running of a starship. He has no desire to command so many troops himself.

But his old CO was killed over a year ago, and ever since, Morlissen has tried—and largely failed—to be as successful a captain.

He should be grateful to Malak, he thinks. All too often, officers in his position are simply executed for incompetence. As it stands, he will be lucky to live to see another sunrise.

His hands are sweating. He wipes them on his uniform and swallows, hard. "Status report," he calls out to the nearest ensign, with a decisiveness he does not feel.

"Sir, the rearmost cruisers are picking up a few unidentified heat signatures from behind us, in the asteroid belt . . ."

Morlissen prays to every god he knows that it's nothing—asteroid mining equipment, some kind of thermal anomaly, space whales, _anything_.

The _Endless_'s generators wail as a barrage of laserfire splashes against their aft shields.

"Damn," he says calmly. "Red alert, if you please. Ensign?"

"Rear ships report heavy damage—those starfighters hit shields and engines, hard," the ensign says, fingers flying over his interface.

The comms officer twists around in her seat, one hand pressed to her ear. "Sir, the task force is scattering—Commander Lyam is asking for orders."

"Put him onscreen, Lieutenant." A holograph of the other officer's tense face appears, along with three others, all speaking at once, demanding that he _fix this_ somehow, as if he can wave a hand and make the Serennans surrender himself. Morlissen takes a breath. "They hope to herd us towards the planet, forcing us to defend both our fore and our rear simultaneously," he says. "We cannot allow that to happen. You said they were starfighters only at this time, Ensign?"

"Yes, sir!"

"How many?"

"At least two dozen, sir, and they're too fast for our turbolasers to—"

"Send out Flights Aurek through Esk, then! Divert power to aft shields, bring the worst-damaged ships planetwards so that the others can protect them!"

"Aye, sir!"

And for a few glorious minutes, as the Sith starfighters systematically destroy their enemy in a series of vicious dogfights, drawing them away from the capital ships and allowing them to move in closer to the planet, Morlissen believes that he can win this battle.

Then, as his fighters return and the Sith forces reach weapons range with the Serennans, he remembers: he can't.

The ship shakes and judders, and Morlissen finds himself unable to breathe, unable to think. Ersanne. He was so certain that retreat was the best option, that in order to save his ship he had to disengage from the battle and return from a better position. But he was not only in charge of _his ship_. The _Endless_ was badly damaged, yes, but the rest of the Sith line was holding.

He broke that line out of cowardice, out of sheer ineptitude at command.

Captain Tova Morlissen stands on the bridge of his ship as his crew erupts into panicked chaos, all shouting at each other, at him, stop this, save us, what is happening, should we retreat, we should, we must, shields at nine percent, oh Force—

"Ahead full," he says, his hands shaking and his voice thick with fear. "Target their nearest ship. Fire everything." There is no escape. There is only forward.

(A tiny voice at the back of his mind is screaming _no, no, THINK, this is all wrong, you'll get us all killed!_ But it soon fades to nothingness.)

He clutches at the railing as the _Endless_ comes under heavy sustained fire, dizzy and sick at heart. He watches his fleet crumble through the viewport as the burning crescent of Serenno's dawn grows to swallow him whole.

_So I did see another sunrise,_ he thinks distantly, in the end.

**o.O.o**

The Sith command ship burns in pieces, smears and streaks of red-gold skimming the atmosphere far below. Bastila closes her eyes.

"Extraordinary," says Simm. "I had heard stories of your abilities, but this . . . This is more than I could have hoped for."

"You have your rout," Bastila says hollowly, letting the Force flow away from her, leaving behind the memory of those she drowned in it. She resolutely does not think of corpses falling through the sky, frozen by the merciless void only to be seared to dust before they can reach the ground. She opens her eyes and turns to Simm, who looks quite pleased. "We had a deal, Captain."

"So we did. I will inform the Great Houses of what has transpired here. I'm sure they will be most cooperative in any ensuing negotiations with the Republic." Simm gestures, and the security officers release Onasi and Chena. "You are free to return to your ship, if you wish to contact Admiral Dodonna."

"Oh, I will," says Bastila.

**o.O.o**

_tbc_


End file.
